Countdown to Mindshatter
by CoyoteLoon
Summary: (Cluster Dawn, Part Three) Jenny and Drew are safe with their friends back on Earth, after a painful loss in the escape from Cluster Prime. But now that they've learned of the impending invasion, can they actually do anything about it? (complete)
1. You've Got Mail

The characters of "My Life as a Teenage Robot" were created by Rob Renzetti, and are owned by him and his evil overlords at Viacom. Hey, this is just a fanfic, guys, so please: don't sic the lawyer minions on me. There are a few original characters in this story, and some you'll recognize from the first two installments of this trilogy. The primary one is my own creation and main fan character, Drew Nabholtz, a (formerly human) high school student with a synthetic body is made up of trillions of nanobots. He was introduced back in story number one, "Android Scam".

Well, we've finally arrived at Part Three of the Cluster Dawn Trilogy. If you're just happening across this story at random, then you'll definitely want to go back and read Part One ("Betrayal From Within") and Part Two ("Escape From Paradise") in order to follow what's been happening. The reviews and comments I've gotten from you readers have been completely overwhelming. I really do appreciate the five minutes of your life it takes to hammer out a review and press "submit". I also appreciate the concern expressed for Drew; and at the same time, I realize that many of you are approaching your OC tolerance levels, so I promise that Jenny will have a much bigger part in this story.

By the way, do you have _any_ idea how completely geeked out I was when I was sitting in the theater, watching "The Incredibles", and heard Mirage tell Mr. Incredible that he had to fight an _Omnidroid_?

And oh, even though I've said this before, this time it's probably true: this story may not get finished before Season Two episodes of MLaaTR begin airing. So just assume that the events of "Cluster Dawn" take place before then. Okay, lights off, and … roll film.

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COUNTDOWN TO MINDSHATTER

Part Three of the Cluster Dawn Trilogy

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter One – You've Got Mail

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The large tires on the military helicopter hadn't even settled into the grass when a pair of army corporals rushed up to the door, ducking their faces away from the stinging air-blast that howled down from the rotors. They flung the door open and unfolded the stairs with an efficient urgency, then snapped to attention and delivered a pair of textbook-perfect salutes to an approaching officer with two stars on each shoulder. Mrs. Wakeman shook her head as she watched the white-haired man running towards her, and a growing sense of foreboding began to brew in her belly. In her dealings with the military over the years, she had found that it was more than common enough to see soldiers running about; but when the _officers_ were running, it meant that something _bad_ was happening. Whatever was going on right now was bad enough to make a two-star general run like a scalded dog.

He gave her a quick nod of his head and shouted over the still-screaming engines. "Dr. Wakeman, I'm General Brohammer. I realize that this is short notice …"

Mrs. Wakeman trotted down the stairs, struggling to keep her hair out of her eyes. "But it's an emergency. Yes, yes, when a flying contraption the size of a city bus plops down in your driveway, one can safely assume it's an _emergency_! I can only hope my autotomobile insurance covers _helicopter collision_."

"I'm right sorry about that, ma'am," he boomed in his deep Texas accent, "but we really are in a bit of a bind here. Are both robots with you?"

"In body, if not in spirit," she sighed. "XJ-9, will you stow that blasted thing away, already!?!"

Jenny, aka XJ-9, the super-powered teenage robot who had saved the world more times than she could be bothered to count, hopped out of the helicopter, pressing her hands tightly against a headset that she'd deployed out of the back of her head. One of her blue metallic pigtails was unfurled into a communications dish, and she was shouting urgently into a microphone as if the fate of the universe hinged on her next words. "Connie? Connie, can you hear me? So tell me, did Tamika finally decide if she was going to wear the indigo dress, or the cream one? Because if she goes with the indigo, then I _totally_ have to rethink my entire paint scheme for Saturday! Maybe something in an amber …"

"X-J _Ni-yun_!" yelled the doctor. The number of syllables that she could stretch out of the word 'nine' served as a pretty good barometer of her anger level.

Jenny rolled her eyes with a huff as her mother/creator tapped her foot impatiently. "… looks like I gotta go, Connie, my mom is starting to _spaz out_. Give me a call later tonight, okay? Oh, and find out what Sam's wearing." She returned Mrs. Wakeman's annoyed glare as the headset mechanism re-folded back into her head, restoring it to spherical form. "Okay, okay … so what's the big crisis, anyway?"

"That's classified information, ma'am," said the general, "but I can assure you, it's extremely urgent. I'll fill you in once we're all inside."

Drew stepped onto the ground behind Jenny, his silver-green face slowly pivoting upwards. "Just great. I can't wait to get back inside of _that thing_." The sarcasm in his voice was thicker that the shimmering stew of nanobots that made up his synthetic android body.

"I second _that_ opinion," groaned Jenny.

The giant Cluster starship overwhelmed the Tremorton skyline, even though it was sitting miles away from downtown, in a public park on the outskirts of the city. Its unfathomable bulk still sat in the exact same spot where it had landed three days ago, with its ugly olive-green, dome-shaped hull curving a thousand feet into the sky. Giant landing-struts were splayed and twisted away from the sides of the starship, and from the air, Jenny had thought that it looked like a bloated, obese beetle that had broken its legs and decided to make itself comfortable. It seemed unthinkable that the half-mile-long metal monster could even get itself six inches off the ground, but this ship had carried her five thousand light-years, from the strange robotic world of Cluster Prime back to her ordinary little piece of home on Earth. And for thirty kidnapped high school students, and three thousand human prisoners, the ship had been their means of escape from slavery, back to a world of freedom.

The ship was surrounded by dozens of military and government research vehicles, and numerous tents and trailers had been brought in, transforming the park into an impromptu military base. Hundreds of scientists and researchers were going over every square inch of the spacecraft carrier, hoping to harvest a bumper crop of Cluster secrets and technology. The security was _extremely_ heavy – but General Brohammer was the man in charge, and soldiers parted before him like the waters of the Red Sea. Jenny and Drew followed closely behind, right behind Mrs. Wakeman, who was noisily letting the general know that she found the whole arrangement _highly irregular_.

Drew tuned his internal radio to Jenny's frequency, and nodded to the walking volcano that was Dr. Wakeman. "Your mom's in fine form today," he whispered with a silent smirk.

Jenny stifled a chuckle, and radioed back, enjoying the ability to chat behind her mother's back. "She's still upset that she wasn't picked to head up the alien ship research team. She seriously needs to just _deal_ – and who cares about snooping around inside of a big ugly Cluster ship, anyway? I'm facing a major life-or-death situation here!" She unfolded a door in her pale blue torso, and out popped a thin robotic arm with a selection of paint strips, spread out like the feathers of a peacock's tail. "What do you think I should do for Saturday? Fuchsia, champagne, or light coral?"

"You're asking _me_? I didn't even know those were the names of colors." He cocked a confused eyebrow in her direction. "What's wrong with the blue paint you've got on now? It looks fine."

"_Boys,_" she snorted, rolling her eyes again. "First of all, this isn't _blue_, it's _pale aqua_. And I can't just wear my same old paint color on Saturday! _Sheesh!_"

They briskly walked down a wide, busy corridor along the length of the starship's spine, passing open rooms filled with lab equipment, computers, and exotic weaponry. The human scientists seemed as awestruck as children on Christmas morning, but Jenny thought that nothing could be more boring than row after row of gadgets and science junk. There were simply more important things to worry about, like the Tremorton High School junior prom, which was now only four short days away. And she was _horribly_ behind schedule – last week had been a total write-off, between that stupid shape-shifting Omni-droid, and getting kidnapped by Smytus and taken to Cluster Prime. A whole week of shopping days, lost forever! The injustice of it all was enough to make a girl's fuses blow!

"Come on, Drew, just tell me what you think," she pleaded via radio, as they rushed into an transport tube-car behind a glowering Mrs. Wakeman and the granite-faced general. "Take another look and tell me which color would look good on me!"

"All right, all right, I give up," he groaned, briefly considering the spectrum of paint strips before him. Jenny held them fanned out like a deck of cards, and Drew glided a finger across their surfaces before stopping on a soft shade of purple. "Hey, this one looks kind of nice."

"I was thinking of that one too!" she wordlessly cheered. "It goes really well with my base white color. It's a pale purple … sort of like a lavender … just like the color that Allison …"

Jenny winced, and silently cursed herself for being so stupid. Drew was in better shape than he had been yesterday – at least his surface didn't have that sickly, chalky texture to it anymore – but the mention of the name was like a knife being rammed into his gut. Just remembering the Cluster robot girl, and the horrible sacrifice she had made to help them escape Cluster Prime, brought a fresh glaze of synthetic tears to Jenny's eyes. Allison had been the first teenage robot girl Jenny had ever known, besides herself. They had become good friends almost immediately. But Drew and Allison had become something more than good friends. Jenny had watched them fall in love in front of her eyes … and then she'd watched Allison hurtle away into the black of space, while Drew had stared on helplessly. If there was something even close to a heart inside of his syrupy chest, it had been crushed into countless tiny pieces.

She abruptly retracted the color samples back into her chest. "Maybe purple's not the way to go," she whispered, trying to recover from the uncomfortable silence. If he heard her, he didn't acknowledge it. He stared sullenly at the floor with faraway eyes, as the tube-car started to decelerate. "Sorry, Drew," she added as an afterthought. No, he still wasn't over it, and she could hardly expect him to be.

Jenny suddenly realized that the general had _finally_ started talking about the reason they'd been summoned to the giant ship on such short notice. She just hadn't been paying attention to him. "… and while we're eagerly researching the weaponry and the fighter craft down in the hangar bays, our immediate concern was intelligence gathering. That's why we focused operations on the ship's main computer."

Mrs. Wakeman shot her a suspicious, disapproving glance out of the corner of her coke-bottle glasses. She obviously hadn't heard a word of the robots' little radio-wave conversation, but she had an eerie ability to sense when her daughter's attention was drifting away from serious issues. "XJ-9, have you listened to a _word_ that the general has said?!?"

"Weapons, fighters, computer doohickey," she said with an impish smile.

"And do you know what is _wrong_ with the 'computer doohickey', young lady?!?"

If she'd been built with sweat pores, they would have been operating at full capacity. "Uhhh …"

Then the tube-car doors mercifully _hissed_ open, and Jenny silently radioed a prayer of thanks for the timely rescue. Standing immediately in front of the car, on the starship's computer deck, was a short, disagreeable little man in a white laboratory smock and thick round glasses that dominated his face. A scowling sneer worked its way through a dark, ragged beard as the wizened old man frowned at the occupants of the tube-car, like a professor casting judgment on a lazy group of college students. Then his eyes locked with Mrs. Wakeman's, and the two diminutive scientists instantly assumed a hostile tone.

"I'll tell you what's wrong," grimaced Mrs. Wakeman. "What's _wrong_ is that the military, in its infinite wisdom, saw fit to name this snake-oil _charlatan_ as Head Scientist for the Cluster starship research."

"Hello, _Nora_," chuckled the little man, "I see you brought your automaton daughter with you. Hmmm, a scarecrow and a tin man. If that blob of nanobots behind you can shape-shift into a cowardly lion, then we're all set."

"Phinneas Mogg," she hissed, as if the name itself were insult enough. "So you've managed to throw a spanner into the works, _yet again_. My, what a surprise."

"I've already learned enough from the ship's computer to make your latest research project look like an sixth-grade baking soda volcano!"

"You wouldn't know a quantum decryption algorithm if it snuck up and bit you on the rear end!"

"Doctors, doctors, now's not the time," pleaded the general, comically towering over the bitter academic rivals. He separated them like a referee breaking up a pair of pint-sized prize fighters, then with a snap of his fingers, a pair of soldiers fell into step behind them, and ushered the group down a dimly lit corridor. Another pair motioned for Jenny and Drew to come along, and even though they were still somewhat confused as to just what the nature of the huge "emergency" was, they thought it best to keep up with the general and the scientists. Something about the way that the general kept glancing at his wristwatch was starting to make them a little nervous.

"Hold up! I still don't get it," said Jenny. "What's wrong with the computer doohickey?"

Dr. Mogg's slapped his forehead and shook his head. The mere sound of the word 'doohickey' seemed to send a visible shudder through his clammy skin.

"We've been searching the ship's main computer for any useful information about the Cluster's military plans," General Brohammer explained, for the second time. "But we've run into a bit of a … _snag_."

A pair of thick red-striped doors slid open in front of them, and they walked through them into a large oval-shaped room, filled floor-to-ceiling with dozens of video screens. It was the main computer room, the nerve and data center for the entire Cluster ship. They were immediately bombarded with the sounds of anxious, almost panicked conversations. Nervous technicians were hunched over control panels, frantically working through a spaghetti of wires and cables like medics performing emergency surgery. Keyboards clicked with rapid-fire desperation as the military's top computer experts worked at a feverish pace, frowning at pages of strange computer symbols that flickered on the smaller screens. But the wall was dominated by the huge main monitor, a giant oval screen thirty feet across that bathed the entire room in a soft white glow. And that giant screen was dominated by giant letters and numbers …

"Time to Self Destruct – 00:06:34"

Jenny's eyes sprang out of their recessed sockets like white tetherballs. "A _snag_!?! You call that a _snag_!?! You're gonna blow up the ship!!!"

Mrs. Wakeman's glasses nearly flew off of her face as she watched the counter tick away the seconds. "Sweet Ptolemy's protractor! Phinneas, what on Earth have you …"

"It started all on its own," he protested, mopping a trail of sweat from his brow. "We tried to open a new file, and we think we might have accidentally triggered some kind of booby trap. It must have been one of these junior-grade military hacks; I certainly didn't do anything wrong …"

"If this starship self-destructs, it will obliterate half the _state_!"

"That's why we didn't bother to order an evacuation – it would just cause a mass panic," said General Brohammer, looking more pale with each tick of the countdown clock. "We've been trying to disarm it every way we know how, but nothing works. And frankly, with only six minutes left, I think our chances of stopping it are slimmer than the chances of drawin' a straight flush in Vegas."

Jenny and Drew exchanged a panicked look, suddenly realizing that they might well be six minutes away from being blown into a million pieces. But Mrs. Wakeman simply folded her arms and glared at Mogg, convinced that his incompetence must have had something to do with the impending catastrophe. "Well, I trust you're satisfied with yourself, Phinneas," she frowned. "Honestly, a first year student at Poly Tech would have known to watch out for hidden traps in the file system. XJ-9, you must disable the ship's self-destruct mechanism any way that you can! Andrew, perhaps you could … eh … _digest_ the offending equipment! Hurry, we haven't a moment to waste …"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa thar!" bellowed the general, sounding like he was bulldogging a rebellious rodeo bull. "Doctor, that's not the reason we brought the robots here." He pointed back towards the huge oval screen with a meaty finger. "_That_ is."

Below the giant countdown clock, which now read "00:05:41", there was a row of slightly smaller text which read "Awaiting Confirmation". And beside it were two names: "XJ-9" and "Nanodroid".

Jenny's mouth dropped open in astonishment, and she suddenly realized that the burly general was looking at her in a very accusatory manner. "XJ-9, I have the utmost respect for what you've done to defend the planet Earth, but I have to admit: I'm very curious as to why your name is popping up on a Cluster doomsday program in the ship's main computer!"

"Whoa! Hey, don't look at me!" she yelled defensively. "I didn't put it in there! Do I look like some kind of loser programmer geek to you?"

As amazed as Jenny was to see her name on the Cluster computer screen, Drew was even more stunned. "_Nanodroid_? What the heck is … hey … I think Vexus called me that, once …"

And while the general argued loudly with Jenny, shouting to be heard over Mrs. Wakeman and Dr. Mogg, and the growing panic in the computer room, Drew saw the computer display change slightly. A small series of sine waves marched by on the bottom of the screen, and the letters "XJ-9" began to flash, until another message appeared below the letters: "Voice Match Confirmed."

"Voice match confirmed?" said Drew, scratching his head. "What the heck is that supposed to …"

A moment later, another "Voice Match Confirmed" message flashed beneath Drew's robot name. Then a shrill series of beeps rang out from the monitor, coming close to triggering a few heart attacks among the tightly-wound scientists and computer technicians. Every eye in the room, human and robotic, turned to the large oval screen, as the countdown clock's large numbers began to flash ominously.

Then the countdown accelerated. Drastically. The counter rolled past four minutes. Three. Two.

A few gasps went out throughout the room. Jenny clasped her hands to her mouth in fear. Mrs. Wakeman and Dr. Mogg stopped their verbal feud long enough to realize that the end was upon them.

The counter hit "00:00:00", and sat there, flashing …

And for a few horrible seconds, nothing happened.

Then the screen blazed to life with a large, evil, robot face … grinning a sick, twisted grin.

"Boom," said Queen Vexus, with a sadistic glint in her serpentine eyes. "And people say I don't have a sense of humor."

The general exchanged confused glances with his technicians, who simply shrugged their shoulders. The scientists buzzed with hushed whispers … nobody was quite sure of just what was going on. Drew looked at Jenny, his entire face an unspoken question. She simply frowned at the screen, sure of only one thing. Anything that involved Vexus could only be bad. "Very funny, you evil robot witch …"

But Vexus kept talking, and it was soon obvious that this wasn't a live video connection, it was some kind of recorded message. "Don't strain your puny little meat-brains, vertebrates, the ship is not going to self-destruct. I knew that you wouldn't be able to keep your fleshy little paws off of the main computer, so I took the liberty of having this little present downloaded into it via long-range hyperwave. Since you're watching this now, it can only mean you've begun to poke around in the classified computer files. Well, you can save yourself the trouble. You'll find they're all being erased, even as we speak."

Mogg and the general looked at young army technician holding a laptop interfaced with the ship's computer system, and after a few frantic commands, he confirmed their worst fears. "She's right, sir. All of the files have been wiped."

As if she could hear everything, Vexus' recorded image chuckled with smug laughter. "Tsk, tsk, didn't anyone ever warn you not to open up strange e-mail? Serves you right, primates."

Jenny's frown intensified, and her hands balled into a pair of furious fists as she realized that this whole 'crisis' was nothing more than Vexus' sick joke. She was using some kind of computer virus as a chance to gloat from five thousand light-years away. _I've got more important things to do than …_

"Jennifer, Andrew, this message was encoded using your voice prints as a password, so I assume that both of you are in the room right now." Vexus struck a pose of mock apology. "I'm terribly sorry about my little ruse with the 'self-destruct countdown', my dears. I simply wanted to provide you with a little … _incentive_ to rush over here. You see, I wanted to pass along a message to both of you."

Now Jenny took a few steps closer to the screen, with a sense of morbid curiosity sizzling in her circuits. She stood next to Drew, and by the stunned expression on his face, she could tell he was completely overwhelmed with the idea of an evil robot dictator was sending him a personal message. Well, Vexus had begun to take a personal interest in him lately ... which was to say, she wanted him _destroyed_. She was probably even madder at him now, after the little "grey goo" incident at Base Zero-One …

"After all," continued the robot queen, "you left Cluster Prime in such a rush that I didn't even get a chance to say good-bye. And I know that you're both _very concerned_ about the terrible mess you made."

At that, Jenny saw that even Drew had to smile; he was developing a hatred for Vexus nearly as strong as hers, and they both knew that they'd inflicted some serious damage on the Cluster's starship fleet …

But Vexus was still speaking in that irritatingly cool, refined tone that drove her nuts. "Well, you needn't stress your pretty little microchips about it … I just wanted you both to know that there's nothing to worry about. After all, you may have destroyed one of my military bases … but there are sixty-one others on Cluster Prime alone, and _hundreds_ more spread throughout my empire. So just in case you were worried about the damage you've done to my war fleet, children, let me assuage your fears. One military base is but a drop in the oil pan."

"As for Base Zero-One itself," she continued, "well, as you might imagine, it was rather traumatic for the good citizens of the capital to see a giant silver android rampage through their fair city, and then smother the military base in a layer of dead nanobots. Well, you can relax. _Nobody remembers it_. After a restful night of sleep mode and a good backup session, every robot in the entire Cluster now knows that the damage to the capital was caused by a freak meteorite shower. They're all pitching in as we speak with the cleanup efforts. And the human slaves are working triple shifts to replace the equipment that you destroyed. I estimate that Base Zero-One, and the capital, should be restored to pristine condition in under a month. And once everything is back to the way it was … then I'll simply tell everyone that _nothing ever happened_."

Crackles of angry electricity leapt from Jenny's cheeks. She and Drew had risked their lives fighting Vexus' forces on Cluster Prime. Now thanks to Vexus' invisible-but-total mind control over the robots of the Cluster, she was going to simply 'erase' their victory, and pretend that it never happened. And she'd get away with it. Not only that, but she was going to make the lives of the human slaves even _more_ miserable now. Jenny wished that she could reach into the screen and plow her fist right in the middle of that smug, conceited face …

"You see, it's very important to me that my robot subjects feel safe and secure," smirked Queen Vexus. "They need to know that the Cluster is eternal, and that nothing could ever jeopardize them. They need to know that their noble queen cares deeply for each and every one of them, and will always take care of them … no matter what happens."

Suddenly Vexus began to move, and it became apparent for the first time that she was standing in a large room filled with high-tech machinery. Jenny didn't fully understand what she was looking at, but it appeared to be some kind of communications center, filled with giant computers and networking equipment. There was a large semi-circular control panel in the foreground, and she could see various Cluster robot drones sitting at their work stations, with cable and connectors extending from their bodies to plug into the computer banks. The robot queen strolled casually to her left, and the picture followed her as she walked along the row of consoles.

"Take, for example, this rebellious little robot right here," she said with an evil grin. She rested a twisted hand on the robot's round, gleaming shoulder joint …

Jenny gasped in horror. Drew's jaw dropped open, and his face flashed a paler shade of gray.

Sitting at the communications console was a lavender-and-white robot girl, with a ramrod-straight posture and a blank stare on her face. Her large, oval eyes stared emotionlessly out of the video screen, softly flickering in colors of dull, drab red, like traffic lights. Her violet hair-foil hung limply behind her slender neck, and both of her forearms had unfolded to deploy a series of connector cables and interface sockets. She was plugged into the huge bank of computers in front of her, effectively becoming one with the computers herself.

Drew involuntarily raised a hand towards the screen. "Ally …"

Vexus shook her head in mock pity. "Poor, poor LSN-1482. Seems she fell in with the wrong crowd; a pair of out-of-town robots who came to Cluster Prime and filled her memory banks with a lot of foolish notions about human intelligence and free will. That kind of thinking was bound to lead her to ruin. Our local patrol ships found her floating in deep space, not too far from the planetary ring. Cold, neglected, and all alone … tsk, tsk, tsk. Such a tragedy."

"You miserable …" Jenny caught herself, and glanced over at Drew. He was grinding his teeth together.

The queen stared into the recording camera, and it was as if her eyes shot lasers right through Drew's chest. "The foolish girl seemed to have the silly idea that some robot boy was going to spirit her away and take care of her. Well, he certainly didn't do a very good job of it, did he? It only took, what, ten minutes for him to lose her? Rather pathetic, wouldn't you say?"

Wild patterns of silver-green began to dance over Drew's shimmering surface. His eyes began to quiver with insane rage, and his hands began to shake.

"But you see, Vexus' generosity is legend," said the evil robot queen. She leaned down and stroked Allison's cheek with her crooked, spidery fingers, smirking into the camera as the zombie robot girl's eyes mindlessly flashed with flickering pulses. "She tried to betray me, but instead of destroying her, I'm giving her a chance to rehabilitate herself, working in the Central Communications Node here in my palace. Oh, she needed an _extensive_ reprogramming session. The poor dear was so _very_ confused and upset when we brought her in, we had to start from scratch. But as you can see …" – she gestured to Allison's empty face – "… she's feeling much better now. In fact, _she's_ the one transmitting this little message to you. I'm confident that she'll become one of my most productive LSN droids, in _no_ time at all."

Vexus patted Allison on the head, and gave the screen a final sneering smile. "Well, that was all I wanted to say for now, children. I'm sure we'll all have a chance to get together again, very soon. All my best, darlings. Jennifer, Andrew … _ta ta_."

The large screen winked off, and Jenny blinked back angry tears, fuming at what Vexus had done to her friend. Allison had suffered through the same thing that Jenny had managed to avoid … total reprogramming in a Cluster laboratory. As she pondered the horrors of having one's personality re-written, she heard a primal yell, and caught a furious flash of motion out of the corner of her eye.

Drew looked like he was going to explode. He grew his right hand into an enormous silver-green anvil, and began to sputter and stammer with blind rage, unable to form complete words. Then he flung his anvil-fist into the floor with a force that nearly knocked everyone off of their feet, and collapsed to his hands and knees. Jenny knelt down beside him, and rested a comforting hand on his heaving shoulders.

"She'll pay for this," she whispered to her grieving friend. "We'll _make_ her pay for this."

* * *

Continued in Chapter Two / Forty-eight Hours to Cluster Dawn

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	2. Reading Between the Lines

A/N – Thanks for the enthusiastic response to Chapter One. As some of you noticed, I made a reference to 'Sam', and yes, that was a head-nod to Queenbean3's fan character, Samantha Sanderson.

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Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Two – Reading Between the Lines

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Brad raked his fingers through his signature spikes of thick red hair, trying to find that precise look that struck a delicate balance somewhere between _wild-and-untamed_ and _I-spent-sixty-minutes-in-the-bathroom-to-get-it-to-look-this-way_. He smoothed out the tips of his shirt collar into a pair of crisp, wrinkle-free points, and plucked a stray piece of lint off of his jet-black sweater-vest. Then he leaned back and gently bobbed his head, expending a remarkable amount of effort to project the illusion that he was completely at ease. Cool. Relaxed. Laid-back. _Non-chalant_. Oh yeah, he had the look down, but there was one more critical element to his strategy. The secret weapon … _The Smile_. Oh yeah, the ladies didn't stand a chance against The Smile. He arched an eyebrow and flashed his pearly whites, turning up the charm to dangerously high levels …

"So, Chloe … the prom is coming up on Saturday night. I hear the theme is "Magic Under the Stars". Heh, heh, so … how'd you like to take a ride into orbit with the ol' Bradster?"

The words hung in the room for a few seconds, long enough for "The Smile" to dissolve away into a painful grimace. Brad rolled his eyes at his dresser mirror. "Those could very well be the _lamest words_ that have ever come out of a human mouth," he groaned.

He jumped to his feet and paced around his bedroom to shake off his self-manufactured tension. It shouldn't be this difficult, he kept telling himself. For crying out loud, Chloe had been practically throwing herself at him for the past two weeks. Everyone knew that she wanted to go to the prom with Brad. And all the guys at school agreed that she was a fine example of _high-quality babeage_. So why hadn't he actually asked her to the prom yet? Sure, everything kind of went nuts during the whole Omni-droid rampage last week … and, maybe a Cluster prison camp wasn't he best place to get a prom date. But things were settling back to normal now. _All right, let's try again._

"Chloe," he grinned, pointing his fingers at his reflection like a pair of six-shooters. "You. Me. Prom. Saturday. Let's make it happen, babe."

Brad slapped his face in exasperation. _Maybe if I tried a few lines that were actually written in this century. Arrrrghh! Why is this so hard!?!_ He turned down the volume on his stereo, and flopped back onto his mattress – knocking a couple of schoolbooks onto a pile of dirty boxer shorts – and just tried to relax for a second. It wasn't like he was asking out an impossible target, like a supermodel, or the captain of the cheerleading squad. He already knew that Chloe would eagerly accept his invitation to the prom, probably before he even finished getting the words out of his mouth. Sure, there were always nerves involved in asking out a girl, but _geez_ – this was a proverbial six-inch putt. He'd had _more_ than a few chances to ask her at school today, but he'd backed off every time.

He shook his arms and took a few deep breaths, as if he were preparing to clean-and-jerk an Olympic barbell. "Come on, Brad," he said to himself, "you're making this tougher than it needs to be. Just relax. Rela-a-a-a-a-a-ax. Just say what comes naturally. Say what feels right."

All right then, one last practice run before he headed off to Mezmer's to 'bump into' Chloe. He looked into the mirror, smoothed out the cuffs of his shirt, and took one more deep breath for good measure. _Just say what comes naturally._ He eased a hand into his pocket, and cracked an easygoing grin …

"Hey, y'know, the prom is this Saturday night … and, uh, I'd really like to go with you, Jenny."

The eyes of his reflection stared back at him in stunned amazement. "Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa! Chloe! Chloe! I meant to say Chloe …"

_Oh yeah, that would go over real big, _he laughed at himself. Yeah, the ladies didn't like it when you got their names wrong. Man, for whatever reason, his brain simply wasn't thinking straight about the prom right now. And there were only a few days left to get everything organized and squared away. The junior prom was going to be the pinnacle of the high school social calendar, a chance to step out in style and _be seen_! Tuxedos and evening gowns and stretch limos – well, his mom's station wagon – it was going to be a night to remember. But he hadn't given it much thought over the past week; there had simply been more important things to worry about.

A piece of corkboard hung on his wall, right next to his Acid Reflux World Tour poster, where several stories from the _Tremorton Tribune_ were clipped out and stuck up with thumbtacks. They were highlights from Jenny's crime-fighting activities, including a week-old story with the headline "Teenagers Defeat Alien Shape-shifter". It featured a picture of Jenny and Brad grinning together, standing next to the Silver Shell and Drew, out at the old industrial park. Brad laughed at the newspaper photo – how was a guy supposed to worry about the junior prom when he was having _way cool_ adventures with his superhero neighbor? It _was_ pretty sweet to get his picture in the paper, though – especially since it was something of a fluke. After all, he hadn't even gotten to the park until the fight with the Omni-droid was all over.

The strange thing was, Jenny told him that _he_ had been the one who'd defeated the Omni-droid. He never did figure out what she meant by that. He did, however, remember what she'd done after that – _vividly_. To his surprise, his face began to feel warm, and a quick glance in the mirror confirmed that his cheeks were glowing an embarrassing shade of red. Just _thinking_ about the warm embrace that Jenny had given him was making him blush. _Geez, get a grip, Brad!_ He may not have been a ladies' man in the Don Prima category; it usually took quite a bit to make the ol' Bradster blush. Besides, Jenny was just his good friend – well, his _best_ friend – the cool robot girl who lived next door. They'd both been worried for each other's safety. That's all.

He took a few steps over to his bedroom window, and looked out onto his front lawn. _I mean, it was only a week ago that the whole stinkin' Army was camped out in front of our house, and almost turned Jen into a pile of scrap metal._ That was an unpleasant memory. In fact, the whole twenty-four hours which had followed that little episode had been miserable, a stretch of time when he hadn't been sure if Jenny was alive or not. A sick, cold knot manifested deep in his belly just thinking about it. He had never been so worried for anyone before in his life …

"Hey, what the …" – Brad flung his window open and leaned out.

His little brother Tuck was running around on the front yard with his buddies George and Carver, shooting Nurf pistols at each other and generally making the type of racket one would expect from a bunch of hyper little boys. Except that Tuck looked absolutely _ridiculous_. He was wearing some kind of black jacket that was at least six sizes too large for him, with a pair of black trousers that were equally oversize, causing him to fall flat on his face with every third step he took. _Wait a second_ – now that he was standing up again, Brad could see that Tuck was also wearing a white shirt and a bow tie …

Brad sprinted to his closet, flung open the door – and saw the empty hangar where his prom tuxedo used to be.

"I'M GONNA KILL HIM!!!"

He crashed down the stairs like a runaway piano, half a step away from breaking his neck, and blasted through the front door as if possessed by a demon. Sure enough, Tuck was horsing around on the lawn in his big brother's prom tuxedo, practically swimming in the excess material. The hyper neighborhood boys jumped with excitement as Brad rushed at his little brother, snorting and red-eyed, too angry to form a complete sentence. "Tuck, you rotten … you miserable little twerp …"

"Uh-oh!" laughed Tuck, talking in a very bad English accent with a hint of a lisp. "It looks like the evil Doctor X has sent another one of his hired assassins for a little social call. Well, you're too late, Copper-top. I've already stolen the microfilm!"

"Microfi – Tuck, what the heck are you babbling about?"

Tuck grinned, straightened his black bow tie, and struck a pose with his Nurf pistol as he arched a _very sophisticated_ eyebrow at his big brother. "I'm afraid I don't know this 'Tuck' person you're looking for," he smiled. "The name is Zoom … _Johnny_ Zoom."

Only the knowledge that his dad was but a loud scream away was keeping Brad's fingers from clamping around Tuck's neck. "Get out of my tux _right now_, and you _might_ live to see tomorrow!"

But in spite of Brad's warning – or perhaps, because of it – Tuck kept talking in the suave accent of his current favorite TV action hero. "I'm afraid I can't do that, Copper-top. I have a dinner invitation at the embassy tonight, and there's a strict dress code …"

That was just about enough for Brad. He grabbed the little troublemaker by the lapels of his tuxedo jacket and hoisted him up to eye level, blasting fire from his nostrils. "For crying out loud, squirt, you're gonna get grass stains all over my pants! You stupid little … how long have you been running around out here in my tux?"

Either Tuck truly didn't believe that Brad was angry, or more likely, he was simply having too much fun yanking his chain. Without missing a beat, Tuck glanced at an ugly, oversized watch on his wrist with a cheap decal that identified it as an _Official Johnny Zoom Junior Secret Agent Spy Watch_. "Give me a second, and I'll tell you precisely …" His little fingers tapped at a plastic button on the watch, which chirped with a series of soft _beep-beep-beep_ sounds …

And a pair of Nurf darts thwapped into the back of Brad's head. He turned to see George and Carver grinning at him, each with their own oversized plastic wristwatches and emptied Nurf pistols.

"Good shooting, Double-Oh George! Double-Oh Carver!" shouted Tuck.

"Always ready to lend a hand, old chap," laughed George, feigning his own ridiculous English accent.

"See Brad, I radioed for backup with my spy watch!" said Tuck, momentarily breaking character. "I sent a message in secret code. Isn't that _cool_!?!"

"When I'm done kicking your butt, you little runt," Brad growled in a dangerous voice, "the only way you're going to be able to communicate with the _outside world_ is in secret code!"

"I say, Copper-top, you seem to be a bit hot under the collar," snickered Tuck, slipping back into his playtime persona. "Perhaps you should cool off a bit!" He pressed another button on his watch …

And a stream of water squirted out of the side of the watch and hit Brad right in the eye. Brad sputtered and clutched at his face, dropping a gleefully wiggling junior secret agent to the ground. Tuck doubled over in belly laughter, thoroughly enjoying the degree to which he was annoying his big brother today. He also realized from the murder in Brad's eyes that he was dancing pretty close to a line right now. Tuck knew that no matter what mischief he caused, Brad would never actually try to physically hurt him. Of course, Brad wasn't above putting him in a headlock and giving him a Death Noogie for half an hour. He mashed the plastic buttons on his "spy watch" once more. "Attention all secret agents," he shouted, "I believe it's time for a strategic retreat!"

Three squealing boys ripped around the side of the Carbunkle house – one hiking up the waistband of his oversize tuxedo pants – mere steps ahead of an enraged red-headed teenager. It was every junior secret agent for himself, and George and Carver easily pulled away from Tuck, who simply couldn't match their foot speed in his ill-fitting formal wear. They raced around the back yard and circled around to the front of the garage, which was where Tuck tripped once more on his comically long trouser legs, tumbling to a rough stop on the driveway. Suddenly he felt a pair of arms scoop under his armpits and hoist him into the air. _Uh-oh_, he gulped to himself.

"Heh-heh-heh," he chuckled, trying to charm his way out of the impending payback. "Come on, Brad, I didn't do anything to your stupid old prom jacket, see? I was just having fun …"

Brad waved a set of clenched knuckles, arranged in the dreaded Death Noogie configuration, directly underneath Tuck's nose. "By the time I'm done with you, runt, you're going to be the only kid in elementary school with a bald spot …"

But the cavalry came to Tuck's rescue in the form of a dark green truck with the words "US Army" stenciled on its canvas side, rumbling down the street towards their humble home. Brad was distracted from his revenge as the military vehicle pulled up in front of the Wakeman house, which could only mean that Jenny was back from her emergency trip to the starship crash site. And sure enough, he could see Mrs. Wakeman, Jenny, and Drew sitting inside the truck, along with a uniformed army officer. As soon as the dark green doors opened, the sounds of angry conversation spilled out into the air. The excitable doctor was arguing with the officer, who looked like he'd rather be just about _anywhere_ else in the world at that particular instant in time. Brad didn't understand a lot of the technical terms that Mrs. Wakeman was shouting at the officer – well, Brad didn't understand most of what Mrs. Wakeman said, on a good day – but today she _really_ sounded like she'd woken up on the wrong side of the bed.

The rear door swung open, and Jenny slunk out and rolled her eyes, obviously embarrassed by her mother's ranting. Brad laughed to himself; he recognized that look well, that look that said she wanted to disappear under her bed with a stack of Teen Blab magazines and stay there for a week. Jenny was desperately in need of a save. Ignoring his troublesome little brother for the moment, he sauntered over to the Wakeman yard, where things always seemed to be more interesting than they were at boring old Casa Carbunkle. "Hey, Jen!" he shouted. "So come on, tell me everything! What was the big emergency all about? What's with all the excitement?"

"Hey Brad," she said with an exhausted smile, relieved to see a sane face. She leaned a little closer to him to prevent from being overheard by her mother, not that she _could_ have heard her over her self-righteous sermon on the proper following of scientific protocols. "Uh … my mom ran into a old classmate of hers at the starship site. I think they have … _issues_."

"Yeah, like a cobra and a mongoose have issues," he snickered. "But come on, you gotta fill me in on the news, here. What did the army want? What happened at the starship? What was the ..."

Then they simultaneously flinched from the loud _slam_ of a truck door. Mrs. Wakeman had finished lecturing the army officer, and was out of the truck, her eyes simmering with leftover antagonism. A shrill maternal screech rang out like a drill sergeant calling for morning assembly. "_X-J-Niyun!_"

"Standing three feet away," she sighed, somehow knowing that a stupid command was on its way …

The doctor glared at her with an evil squint that said she was _not_ in the mood to put with her snippety attitude at the moment. "It's trash day, and that old Quantum Gigulator is just sitting down in the basement gathering dust. Bring it up and set it out on the curb for the rubbish collectors, at once."

"Cripes, Mom, I've been home for what, fifteen seconds?" It probably wasn't a smart idea to push her mom's buttons just then, but it was _so obvious_ that she was just channeling her anger into the only outlet available to her – bossing her daughter around. "I'm trying to talk to Brad!"

"You'll have plenty of time to gab with your friends after you …"

"Hold up, Doc," grumbled a rough, haggard voice.

Drew, who had silently flowed himself out of the military truck before it sped off down the road, had been gloomily silent up until that point. Now he drug his feet over next to the doctor, lumbering with all the humanity of Frankenstein's monster. Brad took one look at the embers burning in Drew's eye sockets and winced. _Ouch! Man, it looks like somebody spit in his corn flakes. For the love of Pete, what's the dealio today? Mrs. W is totally cheesed off, and Drew looks like he's ready to take a bite outta something. What the heck happened at the park? Did the police give them a ticket for illegally parking a starship on city property?_

Brad gave Drew a friendly wave, but he didn't acknowledge. He simply glowered down at Mrs. Wakeman like a silver-green ogre. "This Quantum Gigu-whatzit, it's a big hunk of machinery?"

"Yes," the doctor answered tersely.

"And you're just throwing it away?"

"Yes."

"So it wouldn't matter if, say, someone were to pummel it into a tiny, twisted lump of useless scrap by repeatedly wailing on it with a giant fist of nanobots in an outburst of insane berserker fury?"

"Correct."

"Show me the way," he growled, following the doctor toward the front door of the Wakeman house. A cloud of darkness seemed to hover over his head; the very blades of grass on the lawn seemed to shrink away in fear from his dour figure, as he made his way inside.

Brad and Jenny silently watched for a few seconds, until the door swung closed.

"I think he's feeling better!" smiled Brad.

Jenny just slumped her shoulders in response, apparently not sharing his optimism. "I'm starting to get a little worried about him, Brad. I know he's still upset … heck, I'm still upset … but he's starting to weird me out a little bit."

"Well okay, I'll admit … he did look a little weird in school yesterday." Actually, he thought that his pale, chalky friend had kind of looked like an extra from _Dawn of the Undead Freshmen_ …

"That's not what I mean. He's been so _quiet_ ever since we got back from Cluster Prime." Jenny nibbled on the tips of her fingers, a curiously human habit for a robot that didn't have fingernails. "He just keeps to himself now. Everyone notices it; the kids at school just walk around him when they see him come down the hallway, like he's got a disease or something."

"Drew's always been kind of a private, quiet guy," Brad shrugged. The kids at school had always treated Drew that way.

"Well, maybe he shouldn't be," Jenny declared. "Why don't you have a talk with him?"

"Oh, _pffft_, he just needs a little more time to get over it," replied Brad, confident in the knowledge that Drew was, after all, a guy – and the great thing about being a guy was that any emotional damage could be crammed up into a tiny ball and stuffed deep, deep down inside, never to be heard from again. Or at least, not until you had your nervous breakdown when you hit middle age. Chicks always wanted to talk every problem to death; Jenny was no exception. And she _did_ have a bit of a busybody streak in her …

"_Get over it?_" Jenny arched an annoyed eyebrow, which said that she found Brad's attitude to be a little too cavalier. "Brad, he didn't lose a _goldfish!_"

_Oh, fer_ – he was just trying to cheer Jenny up, to lighten the mood, to reassure her that Drew was going to be okay – and now she was jumping all over him! It drove him nuts when she went into "random emotion mode" like this. "Come on, I didn't say that, Jen! Geez, stop being so overdramatic!"

Wrong thing to say. "Overdramatic!?! Brad, how can you be so cold and unfeeling? He was in love with Allison, and he lost her!" She folded her arms with an angry huff and glared into Brad's eyes, angry at what she perceived to be his belittling of Drew's pain … and by association, hers, as well. "But I guess you're just too immature to imagine what it would feel like to lose somebody you _love_!"

Brad got ready to hurl back a wise crack …

And promptly forgot what he was going to say.

A strange silence fell upon the Wakeman driveway, as Brad and Jenny exchanged a series of awkward blinks. Jenny's anger ebbed as she realized that she'd touched an unexpected nerve, and possibly hurt Brad's feelings. And she had, just a bit, because Brad's mind drifted back to the thoughts he was just having about her, about his "best friend", back in his bedroom, as he remembered the life-or-death battle he had witnessed firsthand. When he had thought that _she_ might be dead. Silly, ridiculous thoughts. _Say something, moron. Say that you know just what it feels like …_

"Y-you know," he stammered, eager to divert the conversation from the uncomfortable direction it was heading in, "you never actually told me what happened out at the starship. It must have been something pretty bad; it's sure got everyone on edge."

Jenny looked like she expected him to say something else … but he hadn't, so she decided to let it slide. "Vexus sent us a message," she explained. "Mainly to gloat. But the army guys are trying to figure out if it means that the Cluster is still going to attack Earth. They were still having a big argument about it when Mom, Drew and I left. Half of them think that the Cluster is still going to attack, and the other half think that they won't bother now …"

"Hey, wait a second." Brad tapped his chin, as a thought suddenly came to him. "When we left Cluster Prime, we wasted a giant military base and twenty gi-normous battle ships. What the heck does Vexus even _have_ to gloat about?"

Her chin dropped into her pale blue chest, her face suddenly shrouded in an incredible sadness. "See for yourself," she said in a weak voice.

Her chest-plate split open, and with a lightning-quick transformation, a simple pair of metal rods expanded and unfolded into her emergency trouble monitor. Usually that would be a prelude to a distress call from her mother, but Jenny pulled out another cable and plugged it into the monitor's input jack. This cable led directly to the holographic storage crystals in her memory archives, and with a with a few quick commands, she brought up a recording of the message that Vexus had implanted into the starship's computer. Brad watched the evil robot dictator's arrogant monologue, both fascinated and a little tweaked at Vexus' uppity attitude, until the camera moved to show the other robots in the communications center …

"Whoa," gulped Brad, recognizing the lavender-and-white zombie robot sitting next to Vexus. "I think I see why Drew is so bummed out."

As if on cue, a brooding silver-green teenage android emerged from the front door with his arms coiled around a mangled slab of steel and aluminum that had once been a large piece of scientific equipment. A low whistle passed through Brad's lips; it was apparent that a considerable amount of aggression had been poured into that unfortunate hunk of metal. Brad realized that Drew was silently burning up with rage … not unlike the rage that he had felt when everyone in the school had turned against Jenny. He turned back to the monitor, wondering what Drew must have felt towards Vexus right now …

"Hey, who's that funny-looking robot bug lady?" blurted a pair of young voices. "Coo-oo-oo-ool!"

Brad snapped out of his introspection as he realized that Tuck's annoying friends, George and Carver, had snuck up behind them to gawk at the _wicked awesome_ display of robot freakiness. And if those two little geeks were over here watching Jenny's monitor, then Tuck couldn't be far away …

And there he was, the little twerp, leaning against Mrs. Wakeman's van. He was still dressed in Brad's prom tuxedo, and was striking another ridiculous pose with his Nurf pistol. Jenny couldn't help but giggle as the pint-sized "Johnny Zoom" flashed her a playboy's grin, and started speaking in a bad English accent that sounded more like a case of nasal congestion. "Ah, gentlemen, I see you've met my trusted associate, Miss Moneyjenny. Moneyjenny, do be a dear and whip me up a drink, will you? Super cherry snow cone … shaken, not stirred."

Brad growled with frustration; here he was trying to have a serious conversation with Jenny, and now he was being interrupted by a bunch of stupid little kids. "I ought to shake and stir _you_, shrimp boat," he said in a menacing tone. "And I thought I _told_ you to take off my prom tux!"

"Oh, what, like you need it right now?" smirked Tuck. "You gonna wear it over to Mezmer's to make kissy-faces with _Chloe_?" He clasped his hands to his cheek and batted his eyelashes, then stuck out his tongue to show what he thought of the whole disgusting idea …

Brad mouthed a protest, unable to make a sound with his throat; it felt like the air had been sucked out of his lungs. He wanted to pound his little brother into the ground like a tent stake. Of all the stupid things to say, at the worst possible time, right in front of Jenny … finally, he regained use of his vocal cords. "You just never know when to _shut up_, do you, you little …"

"Hey, this doesn't make any sense," squawked Carver, punching buttons on his oversize plastic spy watch. "It's just a bunch of silly letters that doesn't spell anything."

If it had been possible to mentally teleport three seven-year-old boys to the dark side of the moon, by sheer force of willpower, Brad would have done it then and there. "Will you three runts just _buzz off_ …"

"Maybe if you just read every other letter," suggested George.

Jenny was almost as annoyed with Tuck's nerdy little friends as Brad was. "What are you two little geeks _babbling_ about now?" she asked, with a mixture of curiosity and irritation.

"Your secret message. She's not even doing it the right way," Carver replied, propping a pair of fists onto his little hips. "Geez, some robot …"

Jenny gave Brad a perplexed look, completely baffled as to what Carver could possibly be talking about. Brad just slapped his forehead, and heaved his shoulders with a heavy sigh. The little pests were still playing their stupid make-believe junior secret agent game, and it was _really_ starting to get under his skin. "Tuck, would you and your twerp friends knock it off and leave us alone? Jenny isn't trying to send you a _stupid_ secret message!"

"Not _Jenny_," George sighed, as if he were explaining the most obvious thing in the world, "the _other one._"

The little fellow was pointing a stubby finger at Jenny's monitor.

Right at Allison's face.

Jenny didn't have the faintest idea as to what the little boy was looking at. All she could see on her monitor was the replay of Vexus' cold, sinister smile, as she spoke into the camera and cradled the brainwashed LSN droid's face in her twisted claw. Allison was just sitting there, expressionless and immobile, more mannequin than robot. There wasn't a trace of emotion on her once-beautiful face. Just the horrible glow of those ugly, blood-red eyes …

Softly flickering away …

Long, long, short, long … short, short, long, long … long, short, long, short …

Jenny gasped and nearly fell over backwards. The flickering wasn't random. It was a pattern. A very fast pattern of long and short flashes, pulses that translated very nicely into the universal computer language of ones and zeroes.

"OMIGOSH!" she shrieked. "It _is_ a secret message … and you don't understand it because it's written in _binary_! She's sending us a _message! Drew!_ Drew, get over here, right now! _Hurry!_"

The excited squeal of Jenny's voice was more than sufficient to snap Drew out of his curbside funk, and bring him sprinting to her side like a madman. She hurriedly explained their discovery as she rewound the recorded message, and played it again from the start, this time zooming the picture close in on Allison's face. Everyone watched the recording in total captivation, but only the robots understood binary, so they were the only two who could make sense of the stream of binary flashes. Drew managed to keep his wits about him long enough to morph his hand into a simple flat TV screen, and he displayed a series of decoded letters as Jenny called them out. Finally the message came to an end, and everyone looked at Drew's hand …

"CLUSTER DAWN COMING IN TWO DAYS AT 6250 GALACTIC STANDARD TIME TUNE TO 755 MHZ FOR FURTHER DATA"

Tuck frowned, and looked at Jenny with a twisted expression on his face. "Geez, that's the stupidest secret message I've ever seen."

* * *

Continued in Chapter Three / Forty-seven Hours to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	3. Let's Make a Deal

A/N – Let's do a few review-responses here. Deadeye1, yikes! You've put more analytical effort into the story than I have! In the spirit of Teen-Bot, Jenny's dating adventures revolve more around social awkwardness than physical plausibility; I'm trying to keep a PG rating, after all. Yes, Brad will be doing some big time emotional struggling soon; his main problem isn't that Jenny's a robot, but that he doesn't know how he feels about her. Drew's parents are an interesting angle, but I'm already worried that I'm on the verge of over-using Drew as it is. Including his parents would only increase his share of the story.

As for Allison, a number of you are trying to figure out what's happened to her. You're right in thinking that LSN droids are almost like the "system administrators" of the ClusterNet, but none of you has guessed the truth about her situation yet. Dark Rebel Master, that's cool! And you have too much time on your hands. Hyper Monkey, no, I haven't read any Dan Brown books, and I've already got a giant stack of "to-read" books on my end table screaming for attention! BoneSatellite, I've decided to do something different with this story; I'm not going to worry about chapter or story length. I have it plotted out, but the story will take as long as it takes to tell. Right now I'm guessing somewhere around fifteen chapters.

And yes, I saw the Christmas special, and I thought it was funny, and very well done. And for the purposes of this story's continuity, _it never happened_. As I said before, this story takes place pre-Season Two. I can just hear all those Sheldon fangirls across the globe squealing with glee. Groan.

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Three – Let's Make a Deal

* * *

Mrs. Wakeman strolled to the front of the large canvas tent with a stern expression on her face, clutching a pointer-stick under her arm, like a Prussian field marshal about to address her troops. The folding chairs in the briefing area were filled with high-ranking officials from government security agencies, the world's military, Skyway Patrol, and the Space Defense Forces – some had already been onsite at the Cluster starship camp, and the rest had been flown in by emergency request. They made for a pretty intimidating audience, but Mrs. Wakeman was confident and resolute as she strutted next to the hastily-erected projection screen, certain of her findings and fretful of their ramifications. The assembled officials could infer the seriousness of her message from the squint of her bespectacled eyes.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she began, flexing the pointer in her fists, "I bring you urgent information regarding the Cluster and its evil designs for galactic conquest! I dare say that my findings bode ill for the freedom of every man, woman, and child on the planet Earth!"

Lines like _that_ were usually punctuated by flashes of lightning in the background. Satisfied that she had captured the attention of everybody in the tent, the doctor thrust her pointer into the air with a dramatic flourish. "Commence the presentation!" she barked. A picture sprang to life on the screen …

With a giant fan-shaped silhouette blotting out the middle of the image. A few of the generals in the front row exchanged confused glances, and Mrs. Wakeman slapped her forehead in frustration. Here was a tent filled with the highest-ranking military people in the world, charged with the responsibility of saving the human race, and instead of sensitive intelligence, they were being treated to shadow puppet theater. She glared towards the back of the tent …

Where Jenny was standing, with one of her eyes telescoped outward and shining with a bright light, acting as the video projector for her mother's presentation. But her chest-plate was split open too, and a thin robotic arm was deployed, holding a fanned-out deck of paint strips that was blocking the video image. The robot girl was talking in hushed whispers with a pair of tall, barrel-chested guards who looked like they could have played professional rugby. "So tell me … and please, be brutally honest … should I go with more of a taupe? Or maybe something bolder, like a burgundy?

The first guard tapped his rugged chin, which sported an impressive scar. "Hmmm … with your coloring and features, I think I'd do off-white. Maybe the ivory."

"No, no, no," said the second burly guard, leaning on his high-caliber proton assault rifle. "It's the prom, she wants something that says 'look at me, I've arrived!'. Go with the hunter green."

Mrs. Wakeman silently counted to ten, wondering for roughly the millionth time just why she'd ever thought it had been a good idea to build a _teenage_ robot. "It _appears_ there is a slight problem with the projection equipment," she growled, hissing the words through clenched teeth, "but I'm certain it's nothing that the threat of a _two-week grounding_ won't fix."

With a gasp of horror and the sound of a robotic arm being quickly retracted, the picture on the screen cleared up immediately, showing a still image from the recording that had been found in the starship's computers earlier that afternoon. Everyone in the tent immediately recognized the sneering face that belonged to the Cluster's all-powerful robotic monarch, the dreaded Queen Vexus. The purple-and-white robot girl was a bit of a mystery, however.

Mrs. Wakeman cleared her throat and began. "As you are all no doubt aware by now, we received a recorded message from Cluster Prime earlier this afternoon. What you may _not_ know is that there was another message hidden inside of it – a secret message. A series of rapid optical burst patterns, coming from the eyes of this robot in the lower right, was actually a form of binary code, containing a _terrible_ warning. This Thursday, at precisely three o'clock in the afternoon, the Cluster will launch a military operation code-named 'Cluster Dawn' … phase one of which is a full-scale invasion of Earth, with the intent of turning us into a colony of the Cluster Empire."

A wave of astonished murmurs rippled through the crowd, and the doctor moved on to the next slide. The screen changed to show a three-dimensional map of the space immediately surrounding Earth, overlaid with curving arrows and spaceship icons. "Furthermore, interwoven in the video feed at a frequency of 755 megahertz was a much denser stream of binary code, disguised to look like ordinary subspace interference. After careful interpretation of the data, I have discovered that it contains detailed maps and charts showing the Cluster attack plans. Subsequent pages show the number of vessels that have been committed to the invasion, their attack strategy, navigational vectors, soldier drone counts, weapons compliments, and in-flight movie selections. Gentlemen, the Earth has forty-four hours to prepare for Cluster invasion!"

The tent erupted into a chaos of heated conversations as the doctor quietly folded her arms, and shot a subtle smile off to the side of the room, where Dr. Phinneas Mogg was frowning with his team of hand-picked scientists. Mrs. Wakeman didn't have to say a word … it had been Phinneas' job to find useful military data in the starship's computer, but he'd been upstaged by her, _again_, and he knew it. She'd just scored another point in their life-long academic jousting match.

Heated conversations grew into shouts of panic. "That's less than two days!" "They've never sent anything more than an excursion force at us before!" "Our defense systems are still in ruins!" "They'll mop the floor with us!" "Earth is doomed! Doomed, I say, doomed!"

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, please!" cried Mrs. Wakeman, trying to restore some semblance of order. "I know this is all somewhat alarming, but the important thing is that we know the Cluster's battle plans now, and we can prepare to defend ourselves!"

"Oh, _really_?" sniped a foreign defense minister, pointing to the attack plans on the screen. "And _s'il vous plait_, Madame Docteure Wakeman, would you be telling us just how you propose we defend ourselves from an invasion of _zis_ magnitude?"

"Why, the same way we defend ourselves against _every_ alien invasion," she smiled. "With the most powerful robot guardian in the known universe … my Global Robotic Response Unit … XJ-9!" Mrs. Wakeman gestured to her metallic daughter at the back of the briefing tent, who perched her fists on her hips in a heroic pose, beaming with pride.

The defense minister raised a cultivated eyebrow. "_Zat_ leetle robot is going to defend _ze_ Earth from a fleet of one thousand of _ze_ Cluster starships?"

"You bet your boots I am … whoops! Did you say _one_ thousand?" Jenny deployed a small polishing wheel from her wrist, and ran it over her projector-eye. A piece of lint on her lens, under the "total ship count" column, had made the number three look like the number one. "Sorry about that … heh-heh … my bad!" An audible gasp rose up from the crowd as the chart showed the now-corrected number of starships in the Cluster invasion fleet: not one thousand, but _three_ thousand.

That little revelation did _not_ have a calming effect on the crowd. As a new round of heated arguments flared up among the military and government officials, Jenny simply folded her arms, and smiled a confident smile. Three thousand Cluster starships? _No biggie!_ They were going to be rumbling on _her_ home turf now, and that made all the difference in the world. Fighting on Cluster Prime had been the toughest combat of her life, because the Cluster seemed to have an infinite supply of ships and weapons at their disposal. The Cluster home planet was armed to the teeth; even the artificial ring surrounding it was a massive weapon. Every time she had destroyed a ship, three more would pop up in its place. But if those Cluster creepos tried to invade her home, things would be different. "Remember, I've stopped the Cluster before," she said, hoping to settle the crowd's fears. "I stopped the Minutians, and I stopped those freaky fish-head guys with the giant walking ships. This won't be the first time I've had to prevent some aliens from annihilating us all."

General Brohammer stood up and raised his grizzled voice above the clamor of the crowd. "There's another important question we haven't asked yet," he shouted. "Dr. Wakeman, how do we know if this information is even genuine? We don't know if we can trust the source or not."

"Trust her? How the _heck_ can you wonder if we can _trust_ her?"

Standing perfectly still up to now, the projection screen warbled to life, and sprouted a blob of silver-green molasses that grew into a pained, exasperated face. A few gasps of surprise rose from the audience; most of them had heard about this bizarre "nanodroid", but this was the first time that they'd seen Drew in person. He ignored their reactions for the moment; he had been listening patiently as Jenny projected the slides onto his expanded rectangular belly. But he wasn't going to let that _last_ comment slide by.

"Listen, General Mills, or General Electric, or whatever the heck your name is … that 'source' saved our sorry butts, and helped us escape from Cluster Prime! She stood up to Queen Vexus and risked her life so that we could get back home!" Drew flinched for a split second, fighting to hold his voice together. "Until we got this transmission, we thought she was _dead_!"

"Verifying intelligence sources is standard operating procedure," said the general, choosing to overlook Drew's little insult; he'd been briefed on what had happened on Cluster Prime, and was not completely unsympathetic to the android's feelings. "Listen, son, I know this puts a burr under your saddle, but it's possible that the Cluster could be using your robot friend to feed us disinformation. I mean, look at her. _Tell_ me she doesn't look like she's been assimilated."

Drew collapsed into a gurgling silver-green pillar, reverted to humanoid form, and flailed his arms wildly into the air. "Disinformation? Why the heck would Vexus even _tell_ us that she was going to attack? Allison's job was to connect herself into the ClusterNet. She could have found out all this stuff on her own! Look, I don't know how she's doing it, but the important thing is that she's _alive_, and she's _still_ trying to help us. And we've gotta figure out a way to save her!"

_That_ ridiculous suggestion ignited a new round of shouting, as Jenny and Drew came to Allison's defense, and Mrs. Wakeman desperately (and unsuccessfully) tried to keep her teenage charges from embarrassing her in front of over a dozen high-ranking generals. The cacophony of voices increased in volume and chaos until the military briefing tent sounded like the trading pit of a stock exchange. The doctor tugged uncomfortably at the collar of her turtleneck; it was a nervous habit that surfaced whenever events felt like they were spiraling out of control. She had brought XJ-9 and Andrew back to the starship site with the intention of presenting the decoded Cluster intelligence, and then reassuring the world's military that the Cluster threat was _nothing_ that XJ-9 couldn't handle. She had confidence in XJ-9's design and engineering; she had reams of numbers from her applied statistics and computational analysis, and she had a smattering of motherly pride. But she was having trouble infusing her confidence into the audience.

As she fretted over the deteriorating degree of civility in the tent, she suddenly became aware of a presence at her side, and turned with some annoyance to see the smirking face of Phinneas Mogg next to her. "A most excellent presentation, Nora," he grinned, speaking up to be heard over the shouting. "Looks like you've got them eating out of the palm of your hand."

She heaved her shoulders with a deep sigh, growling at the snickering scientific lackeys who followed behind Mogg like his personal nerd posse. "Phinneas, this is neither the time nor the place for another one of our little bouts of verbal pugilism. I am trying to …"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Nora, I was just _teasing_," he chuckled. "Actually, my colleagues and I weren't surprised at all that you came up with a bombshell like this. You know we all consider you to be the world's leading Cluster expert."

"Oh, puh-_leeease_," she groaned, rolling her eyes with dramatic sarcasm. "I didn't just pop out of a Petri dish, you know."

"Why Nora, Nora, you've got me all wrong," said Mogg, clutching a gloved hand to his chest as if to grasp some imaginary wound. "I know you're upset with me, but I just want to help! After all, we're talking about the safety of everyone on the planet Earth, right?"

Mrs. Wakeman arched a suspicious eyebrow; this was the last thing she had expected from him, especially after one-upping him with the decoded message. "Er … _riiiight_ …"

"Sure, we've had our arguments over the years," he continued, oozing charm from every syllable, "but that's to be expected from two world-leading scientific giants such as ourselves, eh? Nora, we're both professionals. We can set our differences aside until the Cluster invasion is over. What do you say we call a truce? For the good of all mankind? Hmmm?"

She stared at Phinneas' outstretched hand as if it were radioactive. As long as she'd known him, he'd never been one to put "the good of all mankind" ahead of his own personal ambitions. But then again, Earth had never faced a threat like Cluster Dawn before. Perhaps, she thought, just perhaps, he was having a change of heart. Mogg, along with the rest of the officials in the briefing tent, were the only people on Earth who knew just how grave the impending danger was. Perhaps he had taken a peek into the abyss and realized that now was not the time for bickering with one's rival. And if Phinneas Mogg was big enough to admit that … then By Jove, Nora Wakeman was big enough to admit it, too.

"Very well, Phinneas," she said, shaking his hand with a cautious smile. "A truce. It will require all of our combined efforts to ward off this hideous alien onslaught."

"_Combined_ efforts … my thoughts exactly," he grinned.

Dr. Mogg bounced up to the front of the tent and, with some difficulty, regained the attention of everyone in the audience. "Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, please! If we can have some order, please! You've come tonight to hear the latest intelligence on the Cluster's plans, and to organize a defense against them. And that is precisely what we're going to do, right now."

He swept an arm towards his "former" adversary in a gallant gesture. "First, I would like to recognize the spectacular achievement of my esteemed colleague, Dr. Nora Wakeman. With all due respect, General Brohammer, I believe Dr. Wakeman's decoded message is completely genuine. We all remember the sabotage attacks from the Cluster shape-shifter last week. It's quite typical to undertake sabotage activity prior to an actual invasion. And the debriefing of rescued prisoners and high school students after their return from Cluster Prime led us to believe that the Cluster was preparing some kind of new aggressive action. At the very least, sir, I believe we should err on the side of caution. We _must_ assume that Dr. Wakeman's intelligence data is correct."

A chorus of heads nodded in agreement; that sounded logical enough. Mrs. Wakeman dug her little finger into her ear to make sure she was hearing Mogg correctly. As she pondered Phinneas' unexpected new attitude, one of his associates erected an easel behind him, and set up a large whiteboard.

Mogg uncapped a black marker, and began to jot down a stream of incomprehensible equations. "Now, while we still have considerable forces available on the ground and in the air, we have virtually no defenses left in outer space. The only way to save the Earth is to stop the Cluster armada while they're still in space, denying them any chance to land forces on the surface. And at the moment, we have only one resource capable of fighting that armada – Dr. Wakeman's amazing young robot, Miss XJ-9. She is the planet Earth's best and only hope."

Jenny's pigtails nearly shot off of her head in surprise. She hadn't been listening that closely to her mom's boring old school buddy, but … it _almost_ sounded like he'd just paid her a compliment. And for once, he hadn't call her "robot" or "automaton". Now a bit more curious, she decided to pay attention to his perplexing whiteboard scribblings.

With a final flourish of his marker, Dr. Mogg filled the last empty corner of the whiteboard with mind-bending mathematical gobbledygook. "Unfortunately … she's not powerful enough."

"WHAT?!?" shouted Jenny and Mrs. Wakeman, in near-perfect unison. Both of them bolted for the whiteboard, ready to defend their respective reputations. But after allowing the ladies to vent their righteous anger, Mogg began to explain the formulas and figures he had written on the board. It was a giant equation that neatly boiled down the fighting capabilities of two warring parties – the Cluster armada on one hand, and the XJ-9 robot on the other – taking into consideration their speed, firepower, battle effectiveness, defense capabilities, and a dozen other matrices and coefficients that made no sense to anyone with less than two doctorate degrees to their name. Mogg explained that his starship research team had uncovered an important piece of information after all – Cluster starships were being refitted with next-generation reactors and weaponry that increased their lethality by a factor of five. When these changes were added to the Cluster side of the equation, the result was the same every time; Earth came out on the losing end. Mrs. Wakeman looked over the whiteboard with a morbid expression on her face. If there was one thing she respected unwaveringly, it was the authority of cold, hard numbers.

"I do believe you're right, Phinneas," she mumbled, looking like she was swallowing a jar of cod liver oil. "According to these figures, this time the Cluster is throwing more firepower at XJ-9 than she can possibly handle. It's simply a matter of mathematics."

"True enough," replied Mogg, "but if the Cluster can upgrade, then so can we." He waved to one of his colleagues at the side of the tent, a tall, gangly man in a white lab coat. "Plink, bring it over!"

Mogg's scientific partner moved as if he was all elbows and knees; he could only have been an intellectual, as it was immediately obvious that he had not an ounce of physical coordination in his entire body. He babbled under his breath as he pushed a wheeled cart between Phinneas and Nora, stumbling over his own feet twice in the span of twenty paces. Somehow he managed to bump his elbow against the whiteboard, and in the process of steadying it, his small, round glasses nearly came off of his light-bulb-shaped face. The generals in the front row exchanged uneasy looks with each other; Jenny had to quickly cover her mouth to stifle an ill-timed case of the giggles.

"Good evening, gentlemen … and nice _lay_-dy … my name is Professor Mortimer Plink." His voice was so nasal, he sounded like he was talking into a duck call. "Dr. Mogg and I have been working around the clock on a radical new power source … revolutionary, actually … _bwah_, well, no so much revolutionary as, _heh-heh_, well, really, really cool. Everybody gaze in wonder at … the Z-Pack!"

On top of the wheeled cart was a bulbous cylinder, three feet high and two feet wide, looking like nothing so much as a cast iron wastebasket.

Mogg slid up next to it, his chest puffed up like a rooster about to crow. "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you … the Zero Point Energy Generator."

A wave of _ooohs_ and _aaaahs_ washed over the audience, and even Mrs. Wakeman seemed to be genuinely in awe. Jenny cocked an eyebrow at the strange-looking device, looking unimpressed in the way that only teenagers can. "Zero Point Energy? What the heck is that supposed to be?"

"Supposed to _be_? _Bwa-haw!_" Plink's lanky arms shot into the air; it was as if Jenny had questioned whether or not the Earth actually revolved around the sun. "Why, it's only the most primal source of energy in the entire universe, is all! Tapping into the quantum fluctuations … _bwa-haw_, that's, like, teeny tiny … itsy bitsy … um, the quantum fluctuations that compose the very fabric of the, uh, space-time continuum. With the electrons, and the quarks, and the … _bwah_ … teeny tiny neutrinos … so very tiny, they are …"

"What Professor Plink is trying to say," interrupted Mogg, "is that these Z-Packs are capable of generating almost infinite amounts of power. And if we were to mount one of these Z-Packs onto the chassis of the XJ-9, and integrate it into her circuitry …"

Mrs. Wakeman clapped her hands excitedly, and her eyes lit up like firecrackers on the fourth of July. "Oooh, yes! That kind of power source would increase XJ-9's combat effectiveness by an entire order of magnitude! Oooh, Phinneas! Well done, well done indeed!"

Jenny's jaw dropped agape when she saw how much her mother loved the idea. "Hold on a minute … Mom, are you serious? You're going to let them bolt that … that _thing_ onto me?" She flipped open a door in her belly, and out slid a metal railing holding a narrow steel reactor tube with a soft blue glow. "You always said my double-fusion fuel-injected subatomic reactor was the most powerful energy source in the whole world! What do I need one of these stupid Z-thingies for?"

Mrs. Wakeman waved off her daughter's concerns with a flip of her wrist. "Oh, don't get me wrong, dear, you have a _darling_ little reactor. But its design is already three years old! I've been working on a Zero Point Energy generator since before you were assembled, and I was _certain_ that it was a scientific impossibility. Just think of what one of these Z-Packs would do for your efficiency!"

And to Jenny's horror, enthusiasm for the Z-Pack seemed to be winning over the powerful generals and politicians that had amassed in the briefing tent. Well, sure, it was easy for them to love the idea! All they saw was a bigger number getting plugged into Dr. Mogg's giant goofy equation. True, she had to admit, having more power would make it a lot easier for her to fight off an attacking Cluster armada … but none of these losers were going to have to wear _that_ thing to school! Where the heck did they plan on "mounting" that monstrosity, anyway? It wouldn't fit inside of her belly, and it didn't look like it could collapse down for easy storage. On her back? Her chest? On top of her head? Each possibility seemed more terrible than the last.

Dr. Mogg clasped his hands behind his back, quite pleased with his now-increased stature in the eyes of the big cheeses. "Of course, we're trying to come up with additional ways to bolster our defense; every little thing helps. For instance, there are several operational fighters in the flight bays of the Cluster starship, including several of the latest Stealth Wasp models. The ship's weapons bays contain a full compliment of anti-spacecraft missiles, and we may be able to reprogram a few of the automated combat drones to fight on our side. And last, but not least, Professor Plink has been brainstorming some exciting new ideas in the area of … _unconventional weaponry_. Specifically, he feels that we may have an "X-factor" in our arsenal … a renewable supply of cutting-edge Cluster nanotechnology."

Drew's head perked up at the sound of the syllable 'nano'. He had been standing off to the side, seemingly forgotten in the discussion on how best to defend the Earth; he was doing his best to put up with a circle of curious onlookers, and a gaggle of fascinated scientists who poked at him as if he were a silver-green Pillsbury dough boy. But if Mogg and Plink were talking about Cluster nanotechnology, then that could only mean one thing … _him_.

"Hey, um … excuse me?" he said, raising his hand as if he were in physics class. "Professor … _Plink_, is it? Um, how am _I_ supposed to fight Cluster starships? You know I'm not built of the same nano-doodads that the Omni-droid was, right? I can't make engines, or lasers, or even gears …"

"Of course I know that!" blurted Plink, every other word seeming to trigger a spasm of elbows and shoulders. "_Please_, I do have a Doctorate in nanotechnology! Also particle physics, applied chaos theory, artificial intelligence, and, uh … _glah_ … photocopier repair. I've read all of Dr. Wakeman's papers on your particular …" – he made quote marks with his fingers – " … 'breed' of nanobots, if you will, and I have some ideas. Come up to the front of the room, young fellow."

Drew nervously approached the front of the tent; crowds still made him feel very uneasy. Dr. Plink pulled a small metal rod out of his lab coat pocket, and tossed it over to him. "_Bwah_, if you would, please, take a moment to enjoy this … heh-heh … tasty little snack. It's late, and I imagine you haven't had dinner yet. I know I haven't. _Muh-haw, haw_."

With suspicion bordering on the paranoid, Drew tasted the metal rod with his fingers, and found that it was just that, an ordinary metal rod. Well actually, a very _nice_ metal rod. Some titanium mixed with carbon, silicon, and a few of the rare earth elements, mixed in an unusual combination … his fingers quickly flowed around the rod, and in seconds, it liquefied, and was absorbed into his arm.

The professor clapped his hands with a hearty guffaw. "Fantastic! Bwa-haw … look at that, will you … so squishy, with the flowing, and the oozing, and the melting … oh, my. Faster than a scoop of soft-serve in a breeder reactor! Simply amazing. Folks, that metal rod was actually a piece of armored hull from the Cluster starship, and those nanobots gobbled it up like nobody's business! And _that_ is the driving idea behind the genius that is … ah, wait just one second here …"

He reached underneath the wheeled cart and pulled out a large placard, struggling absurdly to get it set up on the whiteboard easel. When he finally got it turned right-side-up, Drew's face nearly fell onto the floor. It was a rough schematic for a electro-magnetic gun barrel … except that this gun wasn't designed to shoot shells or bullets. It was designed to shoot … _nanodroids_.

Plink thrust out his almost nonexistent chest. "… here we go. I give you … the Universal Nano-disassembler Slurry Linear Projection Assembly! Um, patent pending, of course. We just slap one of these bad boys on a space fighter, fly up to a big old Cluster cruiser … _nygah_, they're the bad guys … shoot a blob of hungry little nanobots onto their hull, and _muh-haw_, it's chow time! Ah, I have to admit, the name is a bit, ah, unwieldy … Larry down in laser spectrometry calls it the Plink Pudding Cannon. _Bwa-haw!_ Pudding Cannon. That Larry, he's a pistol, muh-haw, haw … _glavin_."

"I don't believe this!" shouted Drew, his head swimming with disbelief. "You've got more degrees than a thermometer and the best you can come up with is shooting me out of a _cannon_?"

"Well, it does have the disadvantage of, ah, being a one-shot weapon," mumbled the professor, pushing his glasses back onto his nose. "But, uh, that could be remedied if we added a mechanism to … bwa-haw … _slice_ you into smaller pieces before firing. Sort of like … _bwah_ … a giant space nano-sludge paintball gun! Except … y'know … it would actually shoot the nanobots, and not the, uh, paintballs."

It was hard to tell which teenage robot was more horrified by the end of the defense briefing. But the officers, ministers, and scientists seemed more optimistic than they'd been in days. True, the Earth was about to face an invasion of epic scope, but now the battle was no longer a mysterious, abstract threat. There were numbers and vectors and plans to point at, and study, and pick apart – and a deadline to beat. General Brohammer was positively overflowing with optimism, praising Doctors Wakeman, Mogg, and Frink as shining examples of ingenuity and teamwork in the face of crisis. Jenny and Drew desperately tried to talk some sense into Mrs. Wakeman, their only potential ally in the whole tent, but she seemed completely enthralled with the Z-Pack. Their objections grew more ineffectual with each passing second, and as the meeting came to a close, a swarm of scientists circled around the protesting robots, eager for a chance to get their own close-up observations.

In all the ruckus, Doctor Mogg and Professor Plink snuck off to the side of the tent, and gathered up their research notes and data charts. Mogg had a smile on his face like the proverbial Cheshire cat. Plink, on the other hand, seemed to be a bit … _bothered_.

"_Muh-haw_, Phinneas … ah, do you really think it's such a good idea to ah, just give a Z-Pack to Nora like that? For installing on her robot daughter … _haw_, would you just look at her … so cute, with those little pigtails …"

"Of course it's a good idea," beamed Mogg. "After Nora's robot defeats the Cluster armada on Thursday, using one of _our_ Z-Packs, every government in the world is going to want them. They're going to want _millions_ of Z-Packs. And we shall happily build as many as they are willing to pay for. And pay handsomely, I might add."

"But that's not what I mean," gulped Plink. "_Nygah_, you know we still haven't had a fully successful test run. I mean, sure, everything starts off just hunky-dory in the beginning … but then comes the power surges, and overloads … _glah_ … then there's that slight, teeny tiny chance of … eh … catastrophic atomic implosion. With the burning, and the shouting, and the annihi-_lation_ …"

"That's why we have it tested in space," whispered Mogg, with an evil grin. "And if worse comes to worse … well, Nora can always build herself another daughter."

* * *

Continued in Chapter Four / Forty-four Hours to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	4. Personal Agendas

A/N – Several of you guessed, correctly, that Dr. Plink is inspired by Professor Frink from the Simpsons (who is, in turn, based on Jerry Lewis). He's just a minor character, but chances are good that he'll show up again; he was fun to write. Oh, my glavin! Deadeye1, thanks for your comments about General Brohammer; that's exactly how I feel about the way the military is portrayed on TV. Brohammer is partially inspired by General Hammond from Stargate SG-1, who's a welcome exception to the rule. Vehrec, you're right about Drew's "slices", but somehow I imagine that a number of Plink's ideas are a little screwy. Props must be given to mpcp13, who was the first person to use the term "stealth wasp" in a MLaaTR story. Please don't sue me! As for Drew, I'm not reducing his part in the story; the plot makes that impossible, as you'll all see in upcoming chapters. But, I am trying to "beef up" everyone else's share of the story, to prevent you folks from coming down with Drew overload.

One more thing; this might be the last chapter posted until after the Christmas holidays. There's lots of travel and holiday nuttiness coming up over the next two weeks. So from Coyoteloon to everyone out there: Merry Christmas! Now on to our story …

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Four – Personal Agendas

* * *

Circuit patterns zigzagged off in every direction imaginable, humming with rapid-fire bursts of information that glided along at the speed of light. Terabytes of data spat back and forth between processing nodes, large purple orbs that hung in mid-air like the planets of some alien solar system, all bathed in a ghostly ambient glow. The orbs were interconnected by a three-dimensional grid of data pathways that filled the universe, stretching off to infinity and the great network beyond. Some pathways were thin and crooked, like frozen lightning bolts, twisting and wandering randomly across her mind to hook into lesser-used algorithms. But other data pathways were high-capacity pipelines, information highways that burst to life every few milliseconds with a raging chaos of data transfer. Those were the ones that force-fed her an endless stream of mind-crushing agony.

She looked up and saw another mass of raw information rushing towards her signal processing node like a runaway freight train. _Oh, sprockets, this is going to be a big one …._

One of the purple orbs absorbed the data-mass and deciphered the request, which in this case was a routine updating of the positions and velocity vectors of the 11,386 individually powered vessels (capital ships, cruisers, escorts, fighters and skimmers) of the Twenty-third War Fleet. Three dozen more processing orbs flared to life with an intense purple light, and new data flows screamed between them with a synthesized chatter, glowing like streams of fire. The vessels' positions were decoded, verified, calculated, translated, plotted, registered, projected, saved, archived, backup-archived, double-backup-archived, sent to the master war computer, then sent back out to each of the other 11,385 vessels in the fleet, after being converted into local frames of reference, stamped with a 1024-bit quantum encryption code, and modulated to use each of the vessels' individually selected hyperspace signal frequencies.

It was as if an earthquake were shaking her mind to its very foundation. She clenched her eyes, and winced with misery as her CPU's raced to 117 percent of capacity. _AIIGHHH … make it stop! Oh my Cog … please, please, make it stop!_

She gasped with exhaustion as the burst ended, and sunk limply in a tangle of microcircuits like a fly ensnared in an infinitely large spider web. Glowing neon connectors wrapped around her arms and legs like iron manacles, holding her fast while thinner circuits snaked from all around her, hooking directly into receptacles along her forearms, torso and back. Another set of circuit pathways reached down from above to transmit pulses of data directly into six input ports on the top of her head. Her entire body shimmered with a soft purple glow that made her look like a robotic phantom; in fact, when she'd first woken up, she'd briefly wondered if she might be in some kind of horrific cybernetic afterlife.

But this was all too real. This was the ClusterNet, and she was plugged into it – plugged in deep. She was an integral module, a nested program, deep within the great network.

She tried once again to pull a hand free from the tangle of circuitry, and once again, she failed. It wasn't her _real_ hand, just a virtual abstraction, a symbolic image deep inside the lowest levels of her operating system. But even this virtual version of herself was nearly overwhelmed with the new Cluster protocols; they had run rampant throughout her systems like wildfire, overriding her software modules, her neural nets, her voluntary motor control circuits. Her physical body was sitting motionless in the real world somewhere, a metal mannequin plugged into a control console, like a light bulb screwed into a wall socket. As she dangled helplessly in the netting of microcircuits, she grudgingly accepted that her virtual body was as paralyzed as her physical one. She was a prisoner in her own mind.

As if she could possibly forget that, the energy sphere was there to remind her. An milky-white translucent bubble swirling and shimmering with eddies of light, it completely encaged her as she hung helplessly in her neon manacles. It looked to be made from exotic computer code, thousands of separate algorithms that seemed to writhe and seethe and squirm, sometimes in harmony with one another, sometimes in unique patterns. A demoralized frown came over her face; she didn't know what the sphere was, or where it had come from, but it didn't look like something she could break out of.

The sphere did not impede the flow of data, however … and as if to prove that point, another batch of commands rushed through her processing nodes, putting fresh strain on her multiple processing units. She watched her subroutines slice up the block of data, efficiently breaking it down and repackaging it for mass distribution. It was maddening, hanging here like a pitiful puppet, watching her own brain obediently dance to whatever tune an unseen piper played.

But she saw, and heard, and remembered everything … and she was fully aware of her surreal cyberspace surroundings. For some unknowable reason, the personality that was Allison still existed …

Suddenly a fresh set of information packets flowed in from every direction at once, pulsing red blobs of data that raced through the universe, glowing like angry magnesium flares. The crimson pulses sped right for her, as if a thousand laser blasts were being fired off at once; then they leapt from the circuit paths and started to coalesce together into a blood-red cocoon of energy. Her eyes narrowed into an angry glare; _here we go again._ She might not be in the robot afterlife, but that didn't mean there was no devil here.

The energy cocoon dissolved away into a blizzard of pixels … revealing a svelte, feminine robotic form, with an arrogantly grinning face, peering at her through the energy-sphere. Those serpent's eyes could only belong to _one_ robot.

"Good evening, LSN-1482," purred Vexus, preening one of her eyelashes. "At least, I believe it's evening. My, it's so very difficult to keep track of time in here, isn't it?"

"My name is Allison," mumbled the prisoner, shooting daggers with her eyes. "And don't you have more _important_ things to do than torment me?"

The queen hovered in front of her with her hands clutched to her golden chest-plate, pouting with mock indignation. "Well, excuse me for showing a little concern for one of my poor, wayward children! Your queen just wanted to drop by and see how you were doing. Thought you might enjoy the company, dear … after all, your new work environment does seem to be a little … _spartan_."

"If you care so much, _queenie,_" Allison said sarcastically, "you could just let me _out _of here."

Vexus shook a condescending finger, _tut-tutting_ her little outburst of attitude. "Now, now, you don't stop a repair job when you're only halfway done. We still have a _lot_ of work to do on your rehabilitation! Your therapy is going so well, my dear, it would be a shame to end it now. Why, your processing efficiency is already in the top ten percent of all online LSN units! You're well on your way back to being a productive member of Cluster society."

Allison winced as a small burst of data screamed through her processors. "Yay for me," she sneered.

"Oh, but you're not quite there yet, child. We still have to do something about this troublesome streak of independent thinking you've developed lately. It's dangerous … _very_ dangerous. You see, when robots begin to think for themselves, then they get foolish ideas. And when robots get foolish ideas, then they do foolish things." Vexus' face began to sour, and her eyes growled with an angry amber light. "Very foolish things … such as sending secret messages to warn the Earth of our impending invasion."

"I … I don't know what you're talking about," Allison said nervously, suddenly unable to make eye contact with her captor. _She found out. Sigh, that's it. I'm deleted for sure …_

"Most ingenious, my dear girl … I'm _most_ impressed." Vexus gazed upwards at the busily pulsing signal processors, watching rivers of data flow into them. "I'm not sure just _how_ you managed to slip that code into the outgoing video stream. What did you do, write a new subroutine? Create a new multiplexing filter? It must have taken a lot of effort on your part, and you could only have done it by working a few microseconds at a time. Because … it's not like you have a lot of idle time on your hands."

Another blast of commands and data rushed in from Central Resource Control, forcing Allison to generate a detailed report on the past two weeks of fuel and energy usage for each of the 62,585 maintenance robots that patrolled the homeworld's artificial ring, broken down second by second. She shook and convulsed as her processors performed the billions of calculations necessary to finish the report and send it off to one hundred and thirty-seven different supervisor robots in fifteen different divisions. Vexus smiled a thin, cruel smile, savoring the anguish that emanated from every square inch of Allison's ghostly body.

"It was all for nothing," she whispered, her voice an icy dagger. "The Earth is too weak to stand against me, even if those miserable primates know I'm coming. Or maybe you _didn't_ do it for the primates. Did you do it for Jennifer, who poisoned your mind with nonsense about robots and humans being equals? She's a misguided animal-lover, the poor thing. Her corrupted thinking has turned you into a criminal, and driven you away from your home, and your family. Or did you do it for _Andrew_? The one who said he cared for you … then abandoned you to drift alone in the cold vacuum of space, while he flew home to safety? After _you_ sacrificed yourself to help him? How that must _pain_ you, my dear. Thinking of how he betrayed you. Of how you gave up everything for him, and he just threw you away …"

Allison's face snapped up in a blast of fury. "SHUT UP, you miserable witch! Just SHUT UP!"

She felt a heat build up behind her eyes; she wondered if she could cry in cyberspace. She hadn't wanted to give Vexus the satisfaction of getting to her, but the queen's taunting had struck a still-tender wound. _Jenny didn't corrupt me, she showed me the truth. And Drew … I … he didn't … he didn't mean to … he didn't have a choice … oh, Drew, why …_

Suddenly the pain and frustration of her waking nightmare rushed out all at once. "Look, why don't you just assimilate me and get it over with, Vexus? Huh? Why don't you just turn my brain into a big pile of slush and make me your slave, so you can feel all big and powerful? _Wooo_, another great victory for the all-powerful Vexus! She can't conquer the Earth, she can't conquer the mighty XJ-9, and she can't conquer the nanodroid! But oh, she can capture a big, dangerous LSN robot and _force_ her to rejoin the Cluster. _Oh,_ all hail the mighty Vexus! Maybe you should throw yourself another _parade_."

The robot queen hovered silently for a few microseconds, with searing fire in her eyes, and a twisted snarl of hatred on her face. The orb over her head glowed like the eye of a vengeful demon, and crackles of lethal energy licked around her tall, dark antennae. Allison was sure that she was about to lash out at her, and braced for the blow … then Vexus stopped, and looked over her prisoner's pathetic form, dangling helpless inside of an energy bubble. A soft, circuit-chilling laugh wafted up from her voice processor. "You _will_ rejoin the Cluster, my dear Allison. But I'm not going to _force_ you."

Her eyes crackled with unthinkable evil. "You're going to _beg_ me to come back."

Vexus' laughter intensified as she drifted away from her tormented captive, filling the universe with haunting echoes as her image dissolved into a million crimson fireflies. Allison shook with rage and defiance … until she saw four mountains of data speeding towards her processing nodes, by far the biggest batch jobs she'd seen since waking up. She steeled herself against the onslaught and tried to be brave, but she knew _this_ was going to be unpleasant. She shook and shuddered in her glowing bonds as the load on her processors grew closer and closer to her maximum design capacity … then she felt a stab of mind-pain, as the processors were pushed past their safe limits. But more bundles of instructions and data kept rushing in, a virtual waterfall of commands that bombarded her mind without relent. The last remnants of the queen's laughter were finally washed way by a lonely, soul-piercing scream of agony.

* * *

From the outside, a casual observer would have seen only a typical two-car garage, attached to an ordinary suburban new-deco house, and kept walking down the sidewalk without giving it so much as a second thought. If they were a bit more astute, they might have noticed the extra power lines running into the walls from the utility pole outside. Or they might have detected the Hazmat stickers affixed to the corner of the garage door. They may have felt the chill of ice crystals in the midnight air, wafting away from the bleed valve of the liquid nitrogen tank that was mounted next to the propane. If they listened closely, they might even have heard the whine of precision electric motors, or the machine-gun chattering of clammy fingers pounding away on two computer keyboards at once. And if they noticed all of these things, then they might have realized that this was _not_ a typical two-car garage at all.

For within the humble enclave, the impassioned labors of a misunderstood genius had transformed a mere garage into a technological Cave of Wonders. A collection of scientific tools, gauges, and instruments hung on the far wall, between an elaborate set of glass beakers, and a second-hand superconducting magnet. Rack-mounted computer screens hung from metallic poles painted in primer green, just above the chirping phosphor tube of an old-fashioned oscilloscope with a duct-tape repair. The room was filled with the perpetual background hum of high voltage electricity; it took a fair amount of juice to power the arc welding torches (no amateur roboticist should be without one), the xenon-ruby laser (just the thing for reheating burritos), and the fifty giga-electron-volt cyclotron (because c'mon, a lab just isn't a lab without some kind of particle accelerator). It was pretty amazing what a guy could pick up off the University of Tremorton's surplus auction website.

The determined genius took another swig of Uber-Jolt Cola, wiped his chin on the sleeve of his hooded sweatshirt, and spoke into his mini voice recorder with a melodramatic, nasal voice.

"Sheldon's Log … Stardate, Tuesday, eleven forty-eight PM. The ticking clock is a constant reminder of the deadline hovering before me, like a Kulzargian Bird of Prey decloaking in front of Captain Electron's star cruiser. The most critical event of my entire life is now almost upon me. The Tremorton High junior prom … is less than four days away."

Sheldon paced away from his workbench, over to the only space on the wall that was free of scientific equipment. An entire shelf had been cleared of gadgets and gizmos, to make room for an arrangement of flickering candles, which cast their dancing light upon the framed picture of the most beautiful girl in the universe. "Ah, fair, sweet Jenny … my stainless steel siren … my electronic Aphrodite … oh, how I long to feel the beating of her hydraulic pumps against my lanky chest! From the moment I first held her hand in shop class, I knew that Jenny was the only girl for me. I knew that ours would be a romance that would inspire the poets for a dozen generations! Well, um … it would, if she'd actually go out with me."

He flung a hand to his forehead, and walked over to a large, silver robotic exo-suit standing in the corner. "I pledged my devotion to her. I knew our love could bridge the chasm between human and robot! But she felt otherwise … oh, how I remember that terrible day, when she told me that she'd rather date a nice robot boy. So I came up with a plan … an ingenious plan … and the Silver Shell was born! Uh … of course, the whole idea there was to convince her that robots were jerks so she'd go out with me instead, and … that didn't really work out the way I'd hoped. Grumble, grumble, grumble."

Next to the Silver Shell, another robot suit was standing against the wall … an elaborate humanoid android that actually bore a passing resemblance to Sheldon. And its hollow head lie open, filled with electrodes and connectors that were designed to hook up to … a _living human brain_.

Sheldon continued his log entry. "So that's when I decided … if Jenny _really_ wanted a robot boy, then Glory Osky, that's just what she was going to get! I would cast off this pasty, pimply prison that nature had cursed me with, and become a robot myself! I toiled day and night, stopping only for school, the bathroom, and 'Star Drek Deep Space Twelve' every Thursday at eight-thirty, until finally I completed my greatest creation … a robotic version of myself! Finally, I could be with my fusion-powered cherry blossom, and we could rocket off into the sunset hand in hand!" Then he sighed into his mini recorder, and his shoulders sank in frustration. "Unfortunately, that plan hit a snag when I couldn't figure out how to perform brain surgery on myself. Plus, it turns out the sight of blood makes me feel all kind of … oozy woozy."

"I thought all hope was lost … and then … _he_ showed up."

He glared at the school newspaper photo of Drew – which had been enhanced with big goofy glasses, a beard, and devil horns, using a ball-point pen – that was tacked to the wall, and wagged his finger at the teen android's silvery face. "I work myself to the bone, trying to figure out how to turn myself into a robot, and out of nowhere this joker gets a blob of nanobots injected into him that turns him into an android overnight! Of all the rotten lousy luck … that should have been me! All he ever does is whine and complain about being a robot. He's not even very good at it! And Jenny's always helping him, and talking with him, and spending time with him … _ooooh_, the nerve of that interloper! He thinks he's all special 'cause he's the _only_ kid in school made from nanobots."

A wide grin came over Sheldon's face, and he walked back towards a rag-tag assembly of equipment sitting on his workbench. "Well after tonight … that's _all_ going to change."

Sheldon set his voice recorder next to his computer monitor, and admired the deceptively simple cylinder sitting on the desk in front of him. It had a definite homemade look; the outer casing still had ridges and a ripped label that identified it as an old paint can. A loud electric hum emanated from copper-wound magnetic strips welded around the outside, and a thick, smoky vapor poured out of the top, layering the workbench with a surreal blanket of fog. Reams of data flickered on the wall monitors, showing the status of Sheldon's latest customized software build; multi-colored wires ran from the back of his computer into a series of sensors mounted around the can's surface. The teen genius rubbed his hands together with anticipation, and entered a string of gibberish into the keyboard.

"It's taken me months, reading and researching articles on nanotechnology," he said, putting on a pair of absurdly thick lab goggles. "When I saw that nanobots could turn Drew into an android, I knew that they could turn _me_ into an android, too. But nobody really understands just how they work. I was about to give up, until our class got kidnapped and taken to Cluster Prime last week. And _that's_ when I finally caught my lucky break!"

He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a green holographic crystal. It was a data storage device; more specifically, it was a set of lab notes from the secret research facility where he and Brad had been taken as test animals, deep beneath the queen's castle back on Cluster Prime. A set of lab notes that Sheldon had … _borrowed,_ during their escape.

"Stanley's research," he grinned. "The Cluster scientist who designed the nanobots in the first place! Once I finished decoding this baby, I had this whole nanobot business all figured out! Tonight, Sheldon Lee will cease to exist … and the world will witness the birth of … 'Shelbot'! Hmmm, no, no … 'nano-dude'! Oooh, yeah, I think I like that one better. Wait wait, no … 'Commander Ooze'! Eh … okay, I'll pick something out in the morning."

Yes, tonight was the night. All of his computer simulations looked good; the growing process had completed flawlessly while he was at school. Thanks to his underappreciated genius, his tireless work, and an old atomic force microscope he'd bought at a swap meet, Sheldon had created his own homemade batch of bona-fide, atom-munching nanobots. He could already imagine himself slurping and flowing around in his new liquid metal body, changing his shape however he pleased … nobody would ever pick on him again, not if he could grow his fist to the size of a wall safe in two seconds! No sir! And if he could change his shape, then he'd just walk around school in a big, hunky bod that made Don Prima look like a chess club geek. The girls wouldn't be able to resist him! _Jenny_ wouldn't be able to resist him. And that was the whole idea.

Sheldon entered a final command into his computer, and a _Download Progress_ window appeared, as a new operating system … _Sheldon OS 1.0_ … was loaded into his fresh batch of nanobots. He pulled on a pair of thick rubber gloves, and grabbed an empty medical syringe as a harmonic _thrum_ reverberated from the magnets around the paint can. Fingers of white vapor crept over the edges of the table, and flashing screens of raw data flickered in reflection on the dark glass of Sheldon's goggles. Finally, an electronic bloop sounded from the computer, which displayed the message _Download Complete_.

"Here we go," he gulped, feeling his pulse quicken. That was good; a faster heartbeat would distribute the nano-machines throughout his bloodstream more rapidly. He mounted the empty syringe in the rubber claw of a simple tabletop robot arm, which began to twist and turn, until it finally dipped deep inside the homemade magnetic bottle. The can was momentarily obscured by a billowing roll of vapor … then seconds later, the robot arm pulled the needle out. A needle now filled with thick, goopy, silver-green molasses, churning with the spark of synthetic life.

"Success!" he yelled, holding the syringe high above his head, as if he had just pulled Excalibur free from the stone. "Sheldon's Log, make a note: first successful batch of active nanobots was created at eleven fifty-six PM! Okay, now … I'll just inject the nanobots into my arm, and, uh … hoo boy." He took his first good look at the syringe, and suddenly remembered that needles made him woozy, too. "All right, not a problem. All I have to do is take a deep breath and jam this … long, pointy, incredibly sharp needle … into my leg." He started breathing even harder, bordering on hyperventilation. "C'mon, Sheldon Lee, this is for the woman you love! Okay, on three. Ready! One! … Two! …"

He slipped off the goggles, and gave the nanobots a closer look. "Maybe I could just mix these things in with a glass of chocolate milk. Or I could use them for nacho dip …"

Then he noticed a soft hissing sound coming from the syringe. The nanobots inside were churning faster, and starting to work themselves into a froth. The hissing got louder and louder …

Then the syringe shattered to bits, and he jumped so high that he nearly bounced his head off the ceiling. Sheldon dropped the dissolving syringe onto the garage floor, and his nanobots splattered into a small silver puddle, bubbling and moaning as if possessed by evil spirits. Silver-green tendrils launched themselves a few inches into the air … then the silver puddle collapsed into a miniature sinkhole, eating its way through the concrete in the floor. In seconds, the shiny molasses disappeared, leaving nothing but a deep, narrow channel in the ground that echoed with angry growls and hisses. With a newfound sense of trepidation, Sheldon edged over to peer down into the hole; it was six inches wide, and already far deeper than he could possibly guess at. At the rate the nanobots were going, they'd probably hit the Earth's mantle sometime just after breakfast.

He stared at the hole in silent dejection for a few seconds … then exploded into an animated tantrum, beating the air with his fists. "Ohhhhhhh … _poopy_! Dag nab it, that's right, I said _poopy_! Aw, geez … I thought I really had it nailed this time! I don't understand … what could have gone wrong?

He plopped his sad, gangly frame down on a rickety metal stool, pouting mournfully at the experiment data that blinked upon his computer screen … then his eyes drifted upward to the mini figurine of Captain Crush sitting atop his monitor. "What did I mess up, Captain? What did I get wrong? Did I accidentally put a few oxy-silicate groups in the wrong place? _Arghh_, I bet I messed up the software download. Those stupid Cluster lab notes didn't have a finished set of working software in them! I had to figure it all out on my own. And it looks like I _blew_ it."

Sheldon folded his arms with a _huff_, turned off his mini voice recorder, and let his pout grow into a full-blown sulk. "Let's face it, Captain … the only working copy of nanobot software in existence is floating around inside of Drew's body. And it's not like he's gonna let me stick a cable into the back of his head and download his brain." He took another sip of Uber-Jolt, slumping in self-pity …

Then there was a sudden knock on the garage door.

He spat the warm cola all over an old stack of Unpopular Mechanics. He never got visitors in the garage! "_Gahhh!_ Who in the world could be running around at this hour?" He wasn't crazy about letting anyone see his latest experiment, either. In a whirlwind of panic, Sheldon shut off his computers, tossed his tools into a desk drawer, threw an old tarp over the Silver Shell, and slid a rubber welcome mat across the mouth of the nanobot sinkhole. Then he took a few seconds to make himself presentable, remembering, at the last second, to pull off his rubber gloves. He flung open the garage door to see …

A silver-green android, nervously glancing left and right. "Sheldon! Hey, you got a minute?"

He blinked a few times in surprise. "Drew? Uh … yeah … yeah, sure! Uh … er … what are you doing up so late? Don't you …"

"Couldn't sleep," interrupted the nervous visitor. "Look, can I come in and talk for a sec?"

Sheldon couldn't think of how to say _no_ without sounding suspicious. Drew was the last person he wanted to have looking around his lab right now. "Uh … well … you see, I …"

But Drew abruptly walked in past him, with a terse edge in his voice. "It's pretty important, Sheldon. Besides, this shouldn't take long."

Sheldon closed the door and nervously followed after Drew, as his unwelcome visitor took a few moments to look at the fantastic equipment lining the walls of his garage. There was something different about Drew's demeanor, he noticed … he wasn't angry, wasn't exactly glum … the best word he could come up with was _businesslike_. Finally, Drew turned on his heel and clasped his hands behind his back.

"Look, Sheldon, I know you don't like me very much … but I need a favor from you." He gestured to the exo-suit standing in the corner; the tarp didn't do a very good job of hiding it. "I promised that I wouldn't tell anyone you were the Silver Shell. Well, I've kept my mouth shut so far … and if you do this favor for me, I'll never bring it up again."

Sheldon's face twisted in confusion. Drew was the only person who knew that _he_ was the Silver Shell; he wasn't sure if he was making a promise, or a threatening to reveal his secret identity. "What _kind_ of favor?" he asked, suspicion dripping from every word.

"Well, I got to thinking, you're pretty much a computer genius, right? You write programs and stuff, and you can hack into computer systems … just like you used me to hack into that data network when we were back on Cluster Prime."

"Well, _heh-heh_, I don't like to _brag_," grinned Sheldon, "but pretty much, yeah, I am."

"Could you make an anti-virus program?"

"Pfft, sure, no problem." Now Sheldon was starting to grow curious. "An anti-virus against what?"

"Cluster infection," said Drew, with cold, serious eyes. "You know how the adaptive algorithms in my body's nanobots act like an immune system against Cluster mind control? You think you could you look through that software, find those algorithms, and turn them into an anti-virus program?"

Sheldon fought hard to keep the oncoming grin from splitting his face in half. "I suppose I _could_ … but, in order to get at that software, I'd need to …" – he crossed his fingers behind his back – "… stick a cable into the back of your head and download your brain."

Drew heaved his shoulders with a sharp sigh. "Let's get to it, then. Sheldon, I really appreciate this."

"Not a problem, Drew old pal," said Sheldon, smiling to himself as he rebooted his desktop computer. "Not a problem _at all_."

* * *

Continued in Chapter Five / Thirty-nine Hours to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	5. The Hunchback of Tremorton High

A/N – Hope everyone had a happy holiday! Things got a bit hectic, as expected, but I did steal an hour or two to tap away at the ol' keyboard. Thanks to everyone for their warm Christmas wishes, and here's hoping that we all have a bright and prosperous new year.

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Five – The Hunchback of Tremorton High

* * *

Drew smiled down at the soft, curved lines of Allison's face, spellbound by the way the swollen red disk of the setting sun cloaked her in a rose-colored aura. Violet hair-foil shimmered in the day's dying fire like a thousand twinkling embers, its texture reflecting the sunlight like a thousand tiny diamonds, giving the impression that a river of stars was flowing down her back. And she was staring at him with _those eyes_, those mesmerizing ebony pools that seemed to stare right through into his very soul, the one he wasn't sure even existed until that night on the balcony when they first kissed. It all seemed so wonderfully ridiculous to him; standing here next to Allison finally made him thankful to be a robot, yet at the same time, it made him feel more human than he had at any time since the accident. He plucked a strand of foil away from her eyes and let his hand loiter on her cheek; being close to her made him feel like he could cross the gulf between Earth and Cluster Prime in a single stride. "It's okay," he whispered, "it's okay. We'll be safe soon, and then you'll never have to worry about the queen or her goons again."

"Drew, I know we just met …" – she slid her slender fingers around his hands, which sent a tingling ripple of silver-green shimmering down his spine – "… and we barely know each other … and the _smart_ thing to do would be to just go plug myself into the backup system and forget I ever _met_ you … but for some reason … I trust you …"

"Don't worry," he whispered, lowering his face to her waiting forehead, "as long as I live, Vexus will never, never lay a finger on you. I won't let her hurt you, Ally …"

Then the ground erupted in a fountain of twisted steel and shattered concrete.

Drew flew backwards in a sickening tumble, his malleable body twisting through the air like piece of driftwood caught in a monster wave. He splattered against a metallic wall and landed in an undignified position, gaping in amazement as a set of enormous daggers shot up out of the earth. A quartet of giant fangs, black as midnight and sharper than an executioner's axe, formed a cage of teeth that encircled a bewildered, panicked robot girl.

"If I _decide_ to hurt her, fool," boomed a sinister voice, "there is _nothing_ you can do about it."

He shuddered with a primal fear; the voice thundered down from the churning, orange storm clouds like a dictum from an angry god. A flash of lightning lit up the heavens, revealing a pair of glowing serpent-eyes that bathed the surreal landscape in an evil light. Then a horrible sound pierced his pseudo-heart like a blow from a poison spear. It was Allison, screaming a high-pitched screech of terror as the giant fangs closed around her body, and lifted her into the air. For they weren't fangs at all, they were _fingers_. She was in the clutches of a enormous, twisted hand – the demonic hand of Queen Vexus.

Vexus loomed miles and miles into the writhing sky, gazing down at the pathetic silver-green android that cringed at her feet. "_You? You_ would oppose _me_, insect?" Sadistic laughter rolled down from the stars, almost loud enough to drown out Allison's pleas for help. "You would _protect_ this traitor from the punishment she so richly deserves?" Vexus increased the pressure of her grip, and Allison howled with fresh screams of agony as bolts of electricity raced through her body.

Drew dropped to his knees and begged the queen for mercy. "No! No! Stop it! Please, STOP!"

"You said you would protect me!" screamed Allison, as blue tongues of high voltage danced across her battered chassis. "Drew, how could you let this happen?!? I trusted you! I _trusted_ you …"

"_Noooooo!_ Vexus, stop it, I'll do anything! Stop it! STOP …"

"Poor, pathetic girl … she trusted you, nanodroid, and instead of saving her – you threw her _away_, and ran back to Earth like a coward." Vexus sneered down at him, her voice filled with equal parts hate and disgust. "_Sigh_, and I had such a magnificent eternity of torture all laid out for you. I do hate to let good torture go to waste … _although_, I suppose I could just give it to your _sweetheart_ here." The evil queen squeezed harder, and crooked black vines sprouted from her fingers, coiling around Allison's struggling body – then they wrapped around her head, and delivered another blast of high voltage that turned her beautiful eyes a hideous blood-red. Vexus smirked with satisfaction. "Dwell on this, nanodroid … while you sleep safe and sound tonight, she will be living out the endless nightmare I had planned for _you_. While you trot off to your silly high school, she will be writhing in eternal agony, forever wondering why she threw her life away for someone as _pathetic_ as you …"

"_Why did you abandon me?_ _Why, Drew?_ _WhyyyyAIIIIGHHHH!!!_" With a final howl of agony, the last of Allison's mind was drained away, and she slumped in Vexus' hand, limp as a broken puppet.

"NOOOOO!!!" screamed Drew, insane with desperation and grief. "NO, for God's sake, NO! I'll do _anything_!" He flung himself at Vexus' massive feet, losing his last remnants of self-control as he wrapped his arms around her heels. "Please, stop hurting her! Stop it! STOP! _STOOOOOOOOOOOOP!_"

* * *

Sheldon slumped against his workbench in exhausted frustration, snapped off his rubber gloves, and tossed them over the back of his metal stool. He slid his goggles back against his sweat-soaked hair, and glared at the wisps of vapor rising from yet another sinkhole in the concrete floor of his garage. After his first batch of nanobots had resulted in failure, he'd decided it might be a good idea to run some tests before rushing to inject himself with what was, after all, highly experimental and extremely dangerous reverse-engineered alien technology. Even though he was _sure_ that his new software – which used algorithms grafted from Drew's downloaded brain – would work perfectly the first time, caution won the day over blind optimism. By creating four new batches of nanobots, and testing each one on a strand of his jet-black hair, he was certain that at least _one_ batch would merge with his DNA and create the same kind of living, oozing nano-sludge that made up Drew's unusual body. He was _sure_ of it. Or at least … he had been, three hours ago. Now he was all out of nanobots, and all he had to show for his efforts was five incredibly deep holes in the middle of the garage.

Five bottomless pits of failure.

He slid another rubber mat over the newest sinkhole and rubbed his tired eyes. "I know the software is right this time," he mumbled to himself. "I _know_ it's right. So that can only mean that my nanobot design is flawed! _Arrrghh_, that could take months to fix!" And he couldn't simply use a sample of Drew's body; he needed an _original_ batch of nanobots, ones that hadn't self-evolved yet. Three hours ago, he'd been certain that his dream of becoming a robot was firmly within his grasp. _Now_ … now it seemed like he had a better chance of becoming the starting quarterback for the Tremorton High football team.

The tired genius glanced up to Jenny's portrait, hanging in the spot of honor of his makeshift shrine, with a look of defeat and sadness in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Jenny," he sighed. "I know there's nothing you want more in the whole world than a robot boy to love you. And … and there's nothing _I'd_ like more in the whole world than to _be_ that robot boy for you. I wouldn't care _what_ people said about me. You're _worth_ it, Jenny. Man … I was _so close_ this time …"

Suddenly, in the middle of his self-pity, Sheldon's was distracted by a strange harmonic tone coming from somewhere in the garage. At first he thought it might be some random feedback from his oscilloscope, or a warning message from one of his computer monitors. But he gradually came to realize that the mysterious sound was coming from the corner … from inside an ordinary plastic wastebasket, sitting next to the garage door. That piqued his curiosity, because that's where Drew was _sleeping_.

After Sheldon had downloaded a copy of his brain-software, Drew had insisted on sticking around until the "anti-virus" program was finished. Sheldon hadn't wanted the company, but once Drew got tired and asked for permission to "crash" for a while, Sheldon realized that he could safely continue his nanobot experiments while Drew slept. The teen android poured himself inside a spare wastebasket, and powered down for a few hours of much-needed sleep. At least Sheldon assumed it was much-needed; Drew didn't look very well, and he hadn't been very friendly or coherent lately. Not since they'd gotten back from Cluster Prime … well, there were reasons for _that_, he reminded himself.

Sheldon tiptoed over to the wastebasket, where gallons of thick, gooey syrup were softly gurgling like a giant pot of silver-green porridge. Ripples on the surface formed concentric circles, humming with vibrations like a stereo speaker. Eerie, harmonic tones reverberated from the wastebasket, soft tones which began to blend together into something approaching speech. _Nooooo … pleeeeease … stooooop …_

"Wow … that's _cool!_" snorted Sheldon, watching the waste-basket speaker vibrate. Drew was talking in his sleep – he must be _dreaming_! Sheldon's scientific mind briefly pondered whether the dreaming ability was natural or not … then he realized that the voice actually sounded pretty _miserable_. "Uh … hey … Drew? You okay there?" _Yeeesh_, how did you wake up a bucket of pudding, anyway? Sheldon tried rapping on the wastebasket like it was a fish tank, then he tried rapping it a little harder, then he dipped a hand in the sludge to splash it around …

A tentacle of nano-sludge leapt out of the basket like something from a cheap horror movie and grabbed Sheldon's hand. "_ALLY, NO!_" shouted a haunting, tormented voice.

"GAAAHHHHHHH!!!!" screamed Sheldon.

"AIIIIGGGHHHHH!!!" screamed Drew's voice, at the same time.

Sheldon picked himself up off the floor and checked to make sure that his heart was still beating – it felt like it was going to explode out of his chest cavity. "Drew, take it easy! Take it easy! It's just me!"

"Whazza? _Huh? Wha?_" The pillar of sludge grew a horribly embarrassed face, and stumbled out of the wastebasket with the coordination of a drunken sailor. Drew was disoriented and totally flustered, and had to struggle for a few seconds to regain his bearings. "Oh, crap, I'm really, _really_ sorry, Sheldon. Are you all right? I didn't mean to … oh, crap … how long was I out? What time is it?"

"Ah, let's see … it's almost three-thirty in the morning," said Sheldon, straightening out the wrinkles in his hoodie. "Don't worry about it. I wasn't going to wake you up, but you were freaking out a little bit. Sounded like you were having some kind of a _nightmare_ …"

"Nightmare? I, uh … geez … _nightmare_ …" From the look on his face, it had been a doozy.

"Yeah, you were yelling something about _Ally_ ... isn't that the name of …"

"Funny, I don't remember a _thing_," said Drew, entirely too quickly. Sheldon cocked a curious eyebrow at him; it was obviously a blatant, and terrible, lie. Drew rubbed at his face as if he were trying to knead it back into its proper shape. "Three hours of sleep. Well, that's three more hours than I managed to get last night. Ah … hey, Sheldon, did you have any luck with that …"

"Oh, right, the program!" Sheldon hadn't had any luck writing a new self-evolving operating system for his home-grown nanobots, but whipping up an anti-virus program had been child's play by comparison. One of his old lab computers spat out a freshly burned data disk. "Order up! _Heh-heh-snort!_ One Cluster anti-virus program, coded and burned and ready to go. Just load this program into a computer or a robot's brain, and it'll be totally protected from the Cluster assimilation virus. So, you're going to give it to Jenny before the big invasion, huh?"

"Huh … _wha_?" Drew still didn't seem fully awake. "No, I'm not … I mean, uh … huh?"

"Well you don't need it for yourself," chuckled Sheldon. "And all my Internet hacker buddies know about the big Cluster invasion coming Thursday afternoon. That's why you asked me for the program, right? You're giving it to Jenny before the big invasion?"

"I'm not giving it to … I'd just as soon not talk about it, if that's okay," croaked Drew, as he bathed his eyes in a fresh layer of nanobots. "Listen, Sheldon, it's late, and I really oughta be going … thanks for letting me crash in your … uh … garbage can, and thanks for the anti-virus program. It's really, _really_ going to come in handy … I _hope_."

And just as suddenly and mysteriously as he had arrived, Drew slipped out of Sheldon's garage, and disappeared back into the night. Sheldon scratched his head, finding himself increasingly baffled by Drew's puzzling behavior. His brain liked to solve puzzles, and he began to consider the strangeness of Drews's special request. His prized Captain Crush limited-edition action figure made an excellent listener when he was thinking aloud.

"He bursts in here, doesn't even _notice_ all of the nanobot experiments I'm running, and then asks for a Cluster anti-virus program that he doesn't need." Sheldon took a bite from a stale Twizzler, and thought about that for a second. "The most obvious answer is, he wants to give it to Jenny as some kind of present … but he _denies_ that. And he's acting really shifty, like he's hiding something." _Hmmm._ Was Drew planning to give the program to Jenny as a present anyway? Maybe so she'd go to the prom with him? That was the first possibility that his paranoid, jealous mind served up, but Sheldon didn't think it seemed likely. By now it was common knowledge that Drew had feelings for that alien robot girl; in Sheldon's Jenny-centric universe, that removed him as a competitor for Jenny's affections. But if he wasn't going to give the anti-virus program to Jenny as a gift, what other possible reason could he want it for?

Because, Sheldon realized with a toothy grin, giving Jenny a gift was a _fantastic_ idea! Okay, it wasn't as good as giving her the present she really wanted – a studly, mechanized robot boy – but maybe the right present, hand-crafted with tender genius and obsessive love, could win her over and convince her to go to the prom with him. Sheldon quickly cleared his workbench, unrolled a fresh piece of blueprint paper, and cracked open six more cans of over-caffeinated cola. He took a long, invigorating drink as he tapped a pencil to his temple. He had at least five more hours before school started to come up with a great idea for Jenny's gift. Fingers began to dance over the keys on his keyboard. _Plenty_ of time.

* * *

Jenny dug in her heels and braced herself against the doorframe, desperately straining with every ounce of strength in her metallic body. "I'm not going out there. _No way._ You can't make me!"

Mrs. Wakeman leaned her shoulder into her daughter's back, and pushed as hard as she could manage with her diminutive legs. "_XJ-Niyun_, stop this preposterous behavior this _instant_! You will be late … _unghh_ … for your first scheduled scholastic lesson … _unghh_ … if you don't get _going_!"

"Well, I wouldn't be _late_ for first period if we hadn't wasted half an hour bolting this stupid _pressure cooker_ onto my back!" Jenny glared at her mother with a _harrumph_, and bumped up the settings on her eyes to _maximum sarcasm level_.

With a final grunt of effort, the doctor shoved Jenny out of the van and onto the sidewalk. "The Z-Pack is not _stupid_, young lady," she growled, leaning against the door to catch her breath. "It represents a quantum leap in mobile power generation technology! And I worked very hard to develop these conduits that will enhance your power output by three orders of magnitude! The least you could do is stop being so stubborn, and give the Z-Pack a trial run!"

But Jenny grimaced in horror as she glimpsed her reflection in the side window of her mother's van. The Z-Pack had _not_ been designed with any consideration for the wearer's appearance. Her mom had calculated that the best place to attach the new zero point energy generator was right in the middle of her back, and that's just where she had bolted it, right after breakfast this morning. It looked like a miniature version of the school's boiler; an ugly, squat cylinder of discolored steel that made her feel like she was wearing a trash can for a backpack. And if that wasn't bad enough, five thick black cables ran out of the Z-Pack and into a set of energy couplers on her torso, shoulders … and one in the back of her head. She'd been transformed into a robotic Quasimodo! Jenny winced with anguish as she remembered back to her first week of school, and all the horrible looks and cruel names that had been hurled at her. It had taken _so long_ to even _begin_ to be accepted, and get the kids used to her … and now she was a freak all over again, with just three days to go before Junior Prom! "Why did we have to put this thing on now?" she whined to her mother. "The big Cluster invasion isn't due until tomorrow afternoon!"

"It is of paramount importance that you give your circuitry time to adapt to the Z-Pack's power levels, sweetie," answered Mrs. Wakeman, as she hopped behind the wheel of her black-and-white van. "Now, I have to hurry back to the laboratory … I think I left the free-electron plasma oven turned on. _Do_ keep your telemetry recorder running so I can review the Z-Pack's performance when you get back home. Oh, and don't forget about the Global Defense Review Meeting after school, dear! As soon as the bell rings, you're to go straight to the Starship Camp at the edge of town. Do you want me to call later and remind you to bring Andrew with you? Or shall I swing by to pick you both up after school?"

"_No! No!_ I mean …" Jenny buried her face in her hands … _sure, Mom, on top of everything else, I want you to pick me up after school like I was a kindergartener_. "Mom, I can remember just fine on my own, _thank you_. Good-_bye_."

Her mother's van sped off with a too-cheerful double-tap on the horn, and Jenny began the long, horrible walk to English class, cringing as she passed through the front doors of Tremorton High School. Not ten seconds inside, she could already hear murmurs and giggles sprouting up behind her as she trudged down the west corridor towards her locker. And _this_ was coming from the kids that had been acting friendlier towards her, especially since the big escape from Cluster Prime last Saturday. Yesterday, the walk to class had been all smiles and waves, and she'd hoped that the new surge of goodwill would last all the way through prom weekend. Now, she ducked her head and quickened her pace, wishing she could just melt into the floor like a certain nanodroid friend of hers. _Thanks a lot, Mom, I look like a walking cement mixer! If I can just make it to my locker without running into anybody I know …_

But as she passed Wood Shop and turned the corner, disaster loomed. The school hunk, Don Prima, was walking right towards her … and he was chatting with his friend Justin, the captain of the boy's swim team! She slapped her hands over her mouth to hold back a squeal of terror, and zipped back around the corner. _Omigosh. Justin. Oh, my, gosh. He's such a hottie, he's radioactive! _Those broad shoulders, the dark wavy hair – Justin Spitzer looked dreamier than should be allowed by law. _Don and Justin! I can't let them see me looking like this. I can't let ANYONE see me looking like this._ What could she do? Hide in the wood shop until school was over? Dive into the supply room and transform into a photocopier? Chill out in the basement by passing herself off as a piece of air conditioning equipment? The guys were getting closer. She had to get out of there _fast_ …

Her motor-skates deployed from her feet, their engines screamed to life … and she heard a mysterious _thrum_ as unbelievable amounts of energy flowed through her circuits. Suddenly the corridor smeared into a blur of color. The skates erupted with a blast of power and nearly ripped themselves clear off her feet as they launched her to warp speed. Jenny barreled out-of-control towards the end of the corridor, barely having time to shield her face before she blasted through the wall in an explosion of drywall and plaster. Her legs flailed about wildly as she fought to keep her balance – something she'd never had to do before – and she became vaguely aware of a hardware floor and basketball nets. _The gym? How did I wind up in the gym?_ She slalomed around a dozen stunned girls from the badminton team, ripped through their net, and almost ran over their coach, leaving a trail of burned rubber scorched into the floor behind her. Jenny finally lost control and spun into a pale blue tornado, shredding through the gym's far wall, the equipment room, and into another corridor before she managed to bring herself to a stop.

The poor robot girl sat in the middle of a pile of dusty debris, shattered lumber, and field hockey sticks, trying to figure out just what the heck had transpired in the past ten seconds. Her cheeks blazed blue with embarrassment under the uncomfortable gaze of snickering students, and the lethal stare she was receiving from the school janitor, who had just finished sweeping the hallway. She gave him a nervous smile, and as an act of apology, she converted her legs into a floor polisher … which promptly squealed like a drag-racer and sanded a six-foot-wide hole into the floor. Everyone within fifteen feet of Jenny was coated in a thick layer of smoke and sawdust. "What's the _matter_ with me?!?" she wailed, tugging frantically at her pigtails. It had been weeks – _months_ – since she'd had an incident with her super-strength! Now all of the sudden she was as clumsy as the first week she was activated! "Can this _possibly_ get any worse?!?"

"I say, dear cousin, the filth in this school is an absolute _disgrace_," huffed a singsong, cultured accent. "I must make a point to have Daddy give the Health Department a call … ugh, I might have _known_."

_Oh no_, Jenny squeaked to herself, _not them_. She stepped away from the gaping hole, brushing the sawdust and rubble off of her shoulders, to see the critical faces of Brit and Tiff Krust surveying the destruction that she'd wrought upon the hallway. Jenny became even _more_ painfully aware of her appearance as she saw that once again, the Krust cousins looked like they'd just stepped off the cover of _Fashion Fantasy_ magazine. Today's theme was Tokyo Punk: the high priestesses of the Tremorton High social scene were decked out in a riot of fluorescent pinks and greens, from their vinyl boots and mini-skirts to the neon color highlights in their hair. Jantrice, Stephanie, and Pteresa hung back a respectful step behind the Krusts, looking on in bewilderment at the disheveled teen heroine.

"H-h-hey there, girls," stammered Jenny, cracking an uneasy smile under the withering glares of the social elite. "I … uh … I just had a little … um … see, I was just trying to get in a little workout before class … in the … gym … and … uh … _eh-heh-heh_ …"

Another chunk of wall plaster fell to the floor, sending up a billowing cloud of fine white powder that made Brit's eyes water with irritation. She coughed a few times, rubbed the grit from her eyes … and wound up smearing electric pink eye shadow all over her gloves. "You miserable metallic _miscreant_!" she wailed. "My eighty dollar mascara! It's ruined! You stupid, clumsy …"

Jenny grimaced in horror. _I am so dead … just carve my tombstone now, I am beyond dead. I'm mega-dead._ "Oh, no, I am so sorry! I'm so, _so_ sorry about the mess, Brit! It was an accident! I honestly don't know what could have gone wrong …" _Maybe I could just drill down into the earth's core and melt myself. It would be over sooner, and it'll be a lot less painful …_

Tiff brushed a chunk of plaster off of her flame-red jacket. "Okay, this is too freaky even for _you_, Robo-Loser." Her eyes bristled with anger, and her mouth curled into a nasty grin as she got a better view of Jenny's "new look". "What the _blazes_ is that thing you got stuck in the middle of yo' back?" she laughed. "Are you expectin' a flood? Cause it looks like you're wearing a scuba tank." The popular girls took their cue and laughed in unison as Jenny blushed furiously, and awkwardly ran a polishing tool over her arm. Between the unforgivable social faux-pas, the filthy hallway wreckage, and the giant metal attachment on Jenny's back, she was an easier target than she'd ever been before. Tiff rubbed her hands in sadistic anticipation; she could reduce a _cheerleader_ to a quivering mass of jelly with her endless repertoire of verbal putdowns. Jenny would be too dang easy. "Yo mama so …"

But Brit tapped her cousin on the elbow, and wagged a cautionary finger. "Wait, wait, Tiff, perhaps I _did_ let my emotions get the better of me. We mustn't rush to condemn our old pal Jenny."

_Old pal?_ Tiff's face twisted into a look of utter confusion. "_Huh?_"

Jenny blinked a few times in disbelief herself. "_Huh?_"

"Well, accidents happen," smiled the fashion queen, baffling her cousin and their legion of followers. "I'm certain that Jenny didn't _mean_ any harm by this little bout of roughhousing. Why, the least we can do is extend her the benefit of the doubt, after she so _heroically_ rescued us all from a life of slavery on that horrid, _horrid_ robot planet."

Tiff scratched her pink-streaked hair, suddenly feeling somewhat lost. "But you told me we wouldn't have gotten kidnapped in the _first place_ if those alien robot creeps hadn't come for that stupid tin-plated …"

She was cut off by a firm elbow to the ribs from her cousin, along with a scheming glance that said _trust me_. "Nonsense, Tiff! In fact, we should consider ourselves fortunate to have a bona fide hero in our midst! If our friend Jenny is having some kind of a problem, why, we should be there for her! I'm sure you all agree with me … don't you, girls?" After a moment of indecision and some nonverbal coaching from Brit, Tiff and the popular girls nodded their heads like trained seals.

Jenny gulped in amazement, and a flustered smile came to her face. "Wow … I … I don't know what to say! That's really sweet of you, Brit! Thanks! I'm sorry again for the mess … I'm just having a some trouble testing this new gizmo that my mom installed on my back this morning. It's supposed to boost my strength, and I guess it does it a little too well …"

"See, I _knew_ it was something like that," cooed Brit, as she straightened out her scarves. "And you were testing your new power by … what, seeing how fast you could wax all the floors in the school?"

Jenny glanced back at the hole in the floor, feeling a _huge_ sense of relief that Brit and Tiff weren't mad at her, and started to jabber as if the Krusts were her new best friends. "Oh, that! _Heh-heh_ … no, I blasted through the gym because I almost bumped into Don Prima and Justin Spitzer on the other side of the school and I was totally spazzing out over this Z-Pack thingy and Justin was like looking so amazingly hot and I was like freaking out and …"

A gleam of opportunity flashed in Brit's eye, and she fought to maintain her poker face as her plotting mind kicked into high gear. "Oh, Jenny, how very _coy_ of you! Well played, dear, well played _indeed_. It never hurts to leave the boys wanting a little more …"

"Huh?" said Jenny, as she finally finished cleaning the dust off her torso. "I … I don't …"

"Come on, there's no secrets between us _homegirls_," laughed Brit. "Why, Tiff was just filling me in this morning on the latest _buzz_ about you and Justin."

"I was? … _Ow!_" Another subtle elbow to the ribs, and Tiff finally began to catch on. "I mean … _oh yeah_, I was! Mmmm-mmm. Girl, it's all over the grapevine. Justin got it somethin' _bad_ for you!"

"He … does?" Jenny's eyes shrank to the size of pinpoints, and she was overcome by a dreamy sense of awe. Justin Spitzer, captain of the swim team, Grade A Prime beefcake, and one of the most popular boys in the entire school … had a _crush_ on her? It was too much to hope for. She had been getting worried as prom approached, and she had remained dateless – but she also remembered the rumors that had been circulating a couple of weeks ago. Rumors that some mystery guy was going to ask her to the prom. She'd held on to that hope … and the mysterious admirer turned out to be _Justin Spitzer?!?_ Jenny let out a high-pitched squeal that shattered every glass light fixture along the length of the hallway.

Brit shielded herself with her history textbook and went on. "Heh … yes. Why, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense! Justin is an athlete, so it stands to reason he would be attracted to … an _athletic_ girl like yourself, Jenny! In fact, now that you have that … um … Z-Pot on your back, or whatever it's called, and you're even _more_ powerful, he's probably chomping at the bit to take you to the prom! I'm sure it's only a matter of time before he asks you."

"Yep. That's right," said Tiff, snapping her fingers for emphasis. "Then again, maybe you should help the boy along a little. You know, give him a little encouragement, if you know what I mean. Right, _cuz_?" Tiff swung her ample hips from side to side, and gave Jenny a knowing wink.

"Uh … encouragement?" said Jenny, perplexed.

"_Intriguing_ suggestion, dear cousin." Brit wrapped a hand around Jenny's shoulder, and spoke in a hushed whisper. "I hear that Justin is terribly shy. I know, it's surprising, but think about it – he hasn't even worked up the courage to speak to you yet, has he? He's probably intimidated by you. You see, Jenny dear, nowadays boys often expect the girl to make the first move. Normally, I would chafe at such tactics but under these circumstances … it might not be a bad idea to be a little _aggressive_. Use your feminine wiles on him, dear. Only three days till the prom, can't afford to take any chances!"

"Right … aggressive!" Jenny's head was swimming with giddiness; everything that poured forth from the Krusts' mouths seemed to make perfect sense all of the sudden. "I can't believe it … thanks for all the great advice, Brit, Tiff! Oh wow … it's almost time for class. I'm gonna be late! I gotta go … thanks again, girls! Maybe I'll see you later? At lunch?" Jenny ran off in a blast down the hall, with the hideous Z-Pack and its thick black cables bouncing behind her, so caught up in daydreams about Justin Spitzer that she didn't even realize she was ripping up chunks of floor tiling with every step she took.

"I guarantee it," Brit snickered to herself, as she watched the janitor shake his fist at Jenny. "I wouldn't miss this for the _world_." The popular girls joined together in an enjoyable round of evil chuckling, and casually made their way to class, anticipating the entertainment they were about to enjoy.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Six / Thirty Hours to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	6. Cupid Has an Off Day

A/N – Well, after a nasty bout of post-holiday blahs, monster writer's block, and an infuriating couple of days fixing my computer after a Windows (censored) "upgrade", here's the next chapter. Sorry it took a little longer than usual, folks!

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Six – Cupid Has an Off Day

* * *

Sheldon weaved his way through a tangle of slow-moving sophomores, clutching the small, gift-wrapped box firmly under his arm. It was finally finished. He'd worked on it through the wee hours of the morning, touching up the last of the soldering while wolfing down a few pieces of cold pizza for breakfast. He'd performed some last-minute adjustments on it with a little tinkering during Social Studies class. And now Jenny's present was finally complete. Sheldon grinned madly as he envisioned what her reaction would be like when he surprised her with the gift. She'd be so overwhelmed by his thoughtfulness, she'd be unable to say anything but "yes" when he asked her to the prom! He was so sure of it, he'd already phoned in a reservation for the best powder-blue tuxedo that the rental store had in stock. It was just a question of the _best_ way to give her the present.

He burst through the cafeteria doors, grabbed a lunch tray, and slipped into the serving line, humming a romantic tune to himself – much to the irritation of the students standing in front of him. A guy couldn't simply stroll up to an amazing girl like Jenny and just _ask her out_, as if he were asking her for a spare pencil. No, no, no, such a moment called for a little _style … _or as the Italians called it,_ savoir-faire_. Something like a spontaneous little dinner-for-two would set just the right mood for the moment. Sheldon made his way up to the beefy lunch-lady, ordered a bacon-tomato-and-Spam sandwich for himself, and placed a second order – for two quarts of her finest vegetable oil. The good stuff, not the gunk they drained out of the fryer vats at night.

He paid the cashier for both lunches, reached inside his sweatshirt, and pulled out a single long-stemmed rose, which he stuck in a soda bottle. The piece de resistance! Romance was all in the details. He strolled towards Jenny's usual table with a spring in his step and a swirling giddiness in his head – hmmm, that might have been the sleep deprivation – no, he was pretty sure it was giddiness from daydreaming about Jenny. After all, how could a mere mortal feel otherwise when his thoughts were fixed upon the magnificence of Tremorton High's most beautiful …

Then his shoulders sunk in disappointment. There _was_ a teenage robot sitting at Jenny's usual table, but unfortunately, it wasn't Jenny. It was Drew, crouched over a pile of papers and books … looking as dark, depressed and withdrawn as ever. He had the whole table to himself, just like he usually did – ever since word had spread through the school about what had happened to Allison, the kids had been avoiding him like the plague. The irony was that, just as with Jenny, Drew could actually have been enjoying a bump in his popularity right now, after helping to rescue his classmates from Cluster Prime. But nobody felt comfortable approaching him; even sitting quietly with his textbooks, depression just seemed to flow out of Drew, like radioactivity from a chunk of plutonium.

Sheldon set his lunch tray down, trying to catch the sullen android's attention. It looked like he was writing an essay or something; must have been a homework assignment. "Hey Drew," he stammered. "Umm, I was kind of hoping to catch Jenny … you wouldn't happen to know where she is, would you?"

Drew kept writing without lifting his eyes, and Sheldon wondered if he might not have heard him; then he answered in a gravelly voice. "Haven't seen her all morning, Sheldon," he said brusquely.

"Ah. Okay, then. Mind if I wait for her? It's kind of important."

"It's a free country," mumbled Drew.

Sheldon grabbed a seat across from Drew and set up a dining spot for Jenny, complete with the vegetable oil, linen napkins, a can opener, his single-rose centerpiece … and the gift-wrapped present. Now there was nothing to do but wait for his beloved. But Drew kept scribbling away in stony silence, as if Sheldon didn't even exist. The awkward silence began to make him feel a bit uneasy. "So … getting a little homework out of the way, hmm?"

"It's not homework."

"Oh, really? Whatcha working on, some kind of story or a poem or a …"

"It's _personal_." Drew morphed one of his hands into a little silver-green privacy wall, and looked up with a single eye that said he didn't feel like talking about it.

"Oooooh-kay then." Well, it looked like Drew wasn't going to be much for conversation today. Sheldon tried to feel some understanding for the guy, but if Drew was going to keep acting like this, then he was going to be one _seriously_ wet blanket when Jenny showed up later and Sheldon tried to set the mood. "Listen, I hate to be a pain here … uh, under normal circumstances, I'd never dream of imposing on you like this, but … is there any chance that you might be able to … you know … move to another table? See, I was kind of hoping that … uhhh … hoping that I might …"

"Hoping that _what_, dude?" Easy-going as always, Brad strolled up to the table and plopped down next to Drew, carrying an overflowing lunch tray and a heavy silver-and-blue backpack slung over his shoulder. "Hey, what's with all the oil, Sheldon? You gonna deep-fry your sandwich or something? Drew! Haven't seen you all morning! What's the good word, buddy?"

That was a line that begged for a sarcastic comeback, which Drew would normally have supplied – but instead, he just mumbled "Hey, Brad," and casually folded up the paper he'd been writing on. He quickly slid it into an envelope, and tucked it underneath the cover of his Physics textbook.

"D'oh … hey there Brad!" Sheldon groaned under his breath; two was company, three was a crowd, and four was an even _bigger_ crowd. Brad was a great guy and all, and one of the few people at school who treated him decently. But Sheldon was really hoping for a few moments _alone_ with Jenny at lunch, and if _both_ Brad and Drew were around, that was going to be difficult. "Uh, the oil … I just thought … well, I thought it might be a nice surprise to buy lunch for Jenny …"

"You bought her lunch? Hey, that's really nice of you," said Brad, making himself comfortable – apparently clueless as to what Sheldon was hinting at. "She'll really appreciate that, Sheldon. She had to _book_ right in the middle of Spanish class – some kind of emergency on the freeway. I told her I'd hold onto her stuff for her until she gets back." He set the backpack down on the bench seat beside him.

"Oh, _phooie kablooie!_ I hope she gets back before lunch hour is over."

"At the speed she was traveling, I don't think _that's_ gonna be a problem," Brad chuckled. "I mean, I've seen Jenny punch a few holes in the ceiling in my day, but now the Spanish class is missing its whole _roof_. That new gizmo on her back really packs some _serious_ juice! She'll be back in a minute or two, tops. You mind passing the ketchup?"

Sheldon slid the ketchup bottle over and sunk down in his seat, in a mild sulk. Okay, so his initial plans for an intimate lunch for two had run into a few snags. But he could ask Jenny out, in front of Brad and Drew, without getting embarrassed. In fact, the more he thought about it – when Jenny saw that he could profess his love for her in front of the guys, she'd be impressed with his confidence! Feeling bolder, he came up with yet another brilliant idea … instead just _giving_ Jenny her present, why not let her find it – as an extra special surprise? As Brad attacked his Salisbury Spam, Sheldon reached over, flipped open Jenny's backpack, and snuck the special home-made present inside. It would be the first thing she saw when she opened it up. _Sheldon Lee, you're a genius!_

Okay, lunch was ready, the present was hidden … all that remained was waiting for the most beautiful, graceful girl in the whole school to show up …

Then the wall next to the cafeteria doors exploded into a cloud of splintered plywood. Dust and debris flew into the salad bar, and a pair of soda machines tumbled over with a spectacular crash. Everyone in the room gasped and turned to see … Jenny, stumbling through a ten-foot wide hole in the wall, blinking in disbelief as she waved the plaster dust away from her face.

She cracked a feeble smile to the crowd. "_Eh-heh-heh_ … my bad," she said nervously, as her cheeks glowed a brilliant blue.

Brad waved to get her attention, and Jenny quickly walked through the middle of the cafeteria, briskly but gingerly, almost as if she were tiptoeing through a minefield. She was eager to escape to the back of the room, away from the stares and the pointing of her bewildered classmates. She was being careful not to touch anything or nudge anyone, while simultaneously attempting to brush off her latest coating of debris with a duster deployed from her wrist. Whatever had happened during her most recent mission, the robot heroine had become covered in grass stains, mud clods, chunks of asphalt … and she had a strange plastic hoop draped over the Z-Pack. It seemed to be a steering wheel – folded in half. Brad, Drew, and Sheldon watched with a growing sense of puzzlement as Jenny gently approached the table with the trepidation of a skater making her way across a patch of thin ice. She wore a weary frown on her face; the school day was only half over, but Jenny already looked ready to go home.

"Hey there guys," she moaned, plucking a piece of stop sign shrapnel from her elbow. "Sorry about the dramatic entrance."

"Jenny! What the heck _happened_ to you?!?" asked Brad. "You look like you got into an underground wrestling match with a giant sewer mutant or something! I thought you just had to save some guy stuck on the freeway?"

"I _did_," she sighed, as a polishing wheel extended from her chest. "Some guy swerved to avoid hitting a baby duck, and his car crashed right through the guardrail. When I got to the freeway, his car was just dangling over the edge of the overpass, almost ready to tip over and fall. So I swooped down, pulled the guy out of the car, and set him down safe and sound, on the side of the road."

"So you saved him!" smiled Sheldon. "Just another day for Tremorton's greatest hero …"

"I'm not _finished_," groaned Jenny. "Just as I set the man down to safety, his car tipped over and fell towards the traffic beneath the overpass. I flew down to catch it, and pushed it back towards the freeway … but I must have pushed too hard, because then the car went _flying_ through the air like a rocket, and landed on a railroad track two miles away. Just as the ten-fifteen train from Fresno was coming by. The train hit the car, jumped off the tracks, and almost plummeted into a ravine – until I flew like crazy and caught all the passenger cars."

A low whistle passed through Brad's lips. "Whoa … pretty impressive, Jen! So everyone was okay …"

"I'm still _not finished_," she groaned again, rolling her eyes. "I caught the passenger cars. But only after I disconnected them from the runaway locomotive, which I kicked out of the way … _way too hard_, again. I kicked a fifty ton train engine halfway across town. It landed in the parking lot of Tri-County Auto Carnival and took out half of their new convertibles. I think Mom's going to get a call from her lawyer later today." Jenny slapped her hand to her forehead and shook her head. "What is the _matter_ with me?!? I haven't felt this out of control since that time I caught a computer virus downloading those bootleg Back Sync Boys songs!"

"It's not you, Jen," Brad said reassuringly, "it's that new Z-Gizmo on your back! None of this started until your mom installed it this morning. Why not just take it off and get yourself back to normal?"

"Mom says I can't," she pouted, as she retracted her cleaning tools. "Everyone says I need the extra power from the Z-Pack if I'm going to stop the Cluster invasion tomorrow afternoon. They say I'll _lose_ without it. And the Z-Pack's diagnostics say that it's working perfectly, so there's nothing wrong with _it_. Mom says that my systems just need some time to get used to the increased power levels. But I don't think that's _happening_, Brad. Every time I touch something, I'm afraid I'm going to break it! This doohickey puts out so much energy that I … I don't think I can handle it!"

"Come on, Jen, I've seen you handle runaway doomsday meteors the size of Ohio. I think you can handle a Z-Pack the size of a turkey fryer!" Brad tapped his chin, trying to think of a helpful suggestion. "Maybe when you head over to the Starship Camp after school today, you can get that Mogg guy to turn the juice down on it, just a little bit … to let you get used it. Maybe it'll help if you take it in stages. You know, just like Space Marines XTreme on my GameStation. You can't just jump from Level One to Level Twenty without working your way up through all the different combat missions! It takes time and practice to build your strength."

While leery of any advice based on video games, there was a certain logic to Brad's idea. "Okay, that _kind_ of makes sense," said Jenny, feeling a bit better. "I'll ask Dr. Mogg to make the adjustments when I see him after school. Oh, right … Drew, don't forget, you're supposed to come to the Starship Camp with me. The general is going to brief us about all the new weapons and fighter ships they found aboard the Cluster mother ship. And they're going over their strategy for defending Earth with us!"

"Don't worry, I haven't forgotten," moped Drew. "Yes, I believe you were going to rocket around with your new infinite energy source, blasting Cluster ships into smithereens with lasers and missiles and particle beams. I, on the other hand, am going to be fed into a giant Salad Shooter, and get turned into silver-green spitballs. Trust me … I can hardly wait."

"Wow, you're going to be defending the Earth, right alongside Jenny! How cool is _that?!?_" Brad punched him in the shoulder, trying to get some kind of a reaction out of his android friend. But Drew only flinched a sarcastic eyebrow in response. Cheering up Drew was proving to be at least ten times as difficult as cheering up Jen. "C'mon, just think about it! You're going to be a hero!"

"Come on, Drew, everyone's counting on you to help me out tomorrow." Jenny placed a consoling hand on his silvery arm. "_I'm_ counting on you."

Drew finally raised his head, and looked at Jenny with haunted eyes. "You sure that's such a good idea, Jenny? Remember what happened to the _last_ girl who counted on me."

She sighed with frustration as Drew's attention returned to his textbook. She still felt horrible about Allison too, but there was a lot of other important stuff to worry about – and it's not like feeling bad was going to help out Allison in any way. Besides, if Drew didn't snap out of it, he wasn't going to be much help to anyone tomorrow. "Look, maybe after we're done with the general this afternoon, you could come with Brad and me to Mezmer's and we can …"

But then a frantic motion caught Jenny's attention, coming from an unexpected direction – from the _popular_ table. The highest strata of social order, the throne from which Brit and Tiff Krust reigned supreme over all of Tremorton High. And _Brit_ was waving to get her attention. She was pointing to the main cafeteria doors, where a trio of attractive boys in letterman jackets had just walked in …

"Omigosh … it's Justin!" Jenny gasped in horror. "_Omigosh, omigosh,_ and I still look terrible!"

"Justin? Justin Spitzer, from the swim team?" Brad gave Jenny a bewildered look. "Yeah, so? What's the big deal about Justin?"

"What's the big deal?!?" shouted Jenny, tugging at her pigtails. "He's only the gorgeous dreamboat with the dark hair and the full lips and the wide muscular shoulders who's got a super-big secret crush on me, is the big deal! He's the one that wants to ask me to go to the prom with him! Everybody in school knows about it! Drew, you knew about it too, didn't you? The big secret rumor that you didn't want to tell me about? When we were training together in the yard last week?" Jenny was beginning to totally _lose it_, in record time. "Omigosh, gotta calm down, gotta calm down … oh wow, I'm so nervous I can hear my servos squeaking! I need something to drink!"

Sheldon's eyes shrunk to the size of pencil erasers. He was mortified, watching his dream girl babbling about some stupid jock that she barely knew! "B-b-but Jenny, I got you some oil for lunch …"

"Oil! That's just what I need to wet my crankshaft!" In a blur of motion, Jenny grabbed one of the cans of vegetable oil from the table, ripped off the top … and sprayed oil all over the table, soaking Sheldon from his head to his waist in sticky, viscous liquid. She belted down a few gulps of oil, then deployed a mirror from her wrist, quickly checking her appearance. Justin was paying for his lunch at the cashier's … he was going to be walking to his table any second now. Jenny made a series of comically distorted faces in her hand mirror, checking her eyes and her mouth to make sure everything was in its place. She might be able to spray a quick coating of fast-dry hi-gloss paint on her lips to give them a little extra _oomph …_

"Oh, no!" she shrieked. "The Z-Pack!" She'd been so worried about how her face looked, she'd forgotten that it didn't even matter – she still had a hideous metal _barrel_ attached to the middle of her back!

"W-w-wait, Jenny!" Sheldon was desperately trying to salvage his romantic lunch. The present! He still had the present that he made for her! "Hey, um … Jenny, instead of worrying about Justin, why don't you check to see what's in your backpack …"

"My backpack! Sheldon, you're a genius!" Her arms ratcheted out and snatched up her backpack, and with a few vigorous shakes, she emptied its contents onto the table – and accidentally crushed the long-stemmed rose. Sheldon's spirit sank as he heard a muffled crunching sound from the gift-wrapped box, as it was buried under a big pile of heavy textbooks and thick binders. Twisting herself like a contortionist, Jenny wiggled her backpack over the gaudy Z-Pack like a cloth cover, and slipped her arms through the straps. Now the Z-Pack was effectively camouflaged … it simply looked like Jenny was wearing a very full blue-and-silver backpack.

"Wish me luck, boys," she grinned, bolting from the table to leave Sheldon in a blue funk, and Drew shrugging his shoulders when Brad asked him just _what the heck was going on_. None of them had heard _anything_ about this big Justin Spitzer crush rumor.

_Okay, okay, if I just stay calm, I can handle this whole Z-Pack business. All I have to do is just … stay … calm._ Jenny closed her eyes and lowered her oil pressure a few notches. Justin was just sitting down to eat at the jock table. _Wow, he is so cute and so popular!_ Going to the prom with Justin Spitzer would be the crowning moment of her freshman existence! Jenny could feel the nervousness bubbling in her wires with each step she took towards the jock table, like a simmering volcano that threatened to erupt without notice. _Okay, here we go …_

She slid up to an empty seat across the table from the swim captain, who was digging enthusiastically into his Spamburger and fries. The other jocks were talking amongst themselves, and for a few seconds, nobody even noticed she was standing there. "Excuse me," said Jenny, with a friendly smile. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

Justin crammed another handful French fries into his mouth. "Uh … you talking to me? Well … uh … sure, I guess." He had look of mild confusion on his face. Of course, that was the way he usually looked, so it was difficult to notice.

She eagerly plopped herself down across from Justin, expecting him to start up a conversation with her. A few moments and half a Spamburger later, she was still waiting. She forced a heavy lump of hydraulic fluid down her throat, but remembered what Brit and Tiff had told her: Justin was shy, and she was going to have to make the first move. "Soooo … Justin … I imagine you must be getting pretty excited about the prom this Saturday night! It's going to be a lot of fun."

The athletic lunk wiped a smear of ketchup from his chin, and glanced up at the weird robot chick sitting across the table, somewhat surprised that she was talking to him. "Uh … yeah, sure, whatever."

Jenny nibbled a few metal shavings from her fingers as Justin returned his attention to his lunch plate. This wasn't going very well. Justin must have been really, _really_ shy, just like Brit had said. She glanced over towards the popular table to see the Krust cousins, along with their entourage of followers, watching her with rapt attention. Tiff flashed her a huge thumbs-up sign, and Brit waved her hands at her, as if to say _go on, go on._ Well, Brit did say that she might have to be _aggressive_. With a heave of her shoulders, she bundled up her courage and tried to tap into her supply of … _feminine wiles_, as Brit called them. Three-inch eyelashes deployed from her metallic eyelids with a soft _whirr_, and she playfully flipped her pigtails back and forth a few times.

"You know … _I'm_ still looking for a date to the prom, Justin," she pouted, in a smoky, singsong voice. She batted her eyes coquettishly and leaned over the table. "You wouldn't know anyone _else_ who's still looking … would you? _Big guy?_"

The dumbfounded Justin looked at her, along with the rest of the jocks at the table, and blinked a few times in confusion. "Uh … you got something stuck in your eye?"

"Playing hard to get, huh? Ya big stud? Then I'll make it real easy for you." Jenny bolted to her feet and propped her hand on her hip, thrusting it out seductively. She wiggled her shoulders and arched her back, drawing on every trick she'd ever read about in five years of _Teen Yak_ magazine. Somewhere in the back of the cafeteria, Sheldon clutched at his chest as if he were having a heart seizure. Justin pushed back from the table, wondering if this crazy robot chick had just blown out her circuit boards. Jenny took it to be yet more shyness, and pressed her attack. "I know you want to take me to the Junior Prom this Saturday, Justin," she purred, with a sly smile. "And I'd _love_ to go with you. What do you say to that?"

He gritted his teeth and sank a few inches lower in his chair. "Uhhhhhh …"

Jenny leaned over the table to deliver the final romantic blow. She gave Justin a double-dose of eye-fluttering, and ran her metallic fingers through his hair …

… just as the table snapped in half under her weight, catapulting lunch trays and hot food into a dozen different directions.

"Oh, NO!!! Uh … don't worry, Justin, I've got it!" Jenny lunged to catch Justin's tray before it spilled all over the floor – but suddenly she could feel the blaze of runaway energy roaring through her circuitry, and she knew she was losing control of her power yet again. Instead of simply jumping ten feet for the lunch tray, she rocketed across the room and body-checked a table with a terrific impact. Students scrambled from their seats as the huge wooden table cartwheeled through the air and slammed into the cafeteria wall. Huge cracks began to run up the wall and creep into the ceiling, and one of the big overhead light fixtures started to rock back and forth … then it pulled free of the ceiling, and plummeted towards a helpless group of band nerds who screamed in terror. Jenny picked herself off the floor, clenched her fist, and prepared to deflect the falling light fixture off to the side …

But she punched it with such force that it blasted through the cafeteria roof like a ballistic missile taking off from an underground silo. The heavy rectangular fixture spun into the sky, where, as luck would have it, a KTRM traffic helicopter was flying by on routine patrol. The pilot barely had time to panic before a fantastic collision sent a violent shudder through his copter. The light fixture ripped through the helicopter's tail section, filling the air with rotors, gears, and oily smoke. The chopper was mortally wounded, and began to spiral wildly through the air … spinning faster and faster, out of control, until its two pilots were tossed overboard by the centrifugal force.

"Oh no oh no oh no _oh no_!" Jenny blasted a giant hole through the cafeteria ceiling, sending an eruption of lumber and plaster flying through the air, and quickly covered the thousand feet of altitude to catch the falling pilots in a pair of giant butterfly nets. But now the burning helicopter wreckage was falling right for the school! Thinking quickly, the super-powered robot girl clutched the rescued pilots in one coiled arm, then deployed a giant tennis racket from the other – and with a mighty swing, knocked the flaming aircraft away as if it were a ping pong ball. But though the school was saved, now the was helicopter was hurtling towards one of the city's major water towers. With a spectacular crash, the copter slammed into the tower's support beams. The giant tower tipped over majestically and slammed to the ground, sending thousands of gallons of water rushing down the street. Cars were tipped over, pedestrians were drenched, and businesses were soaked as the urban flash flood roared through town. A large tanker truck, with the logo of the EV-R-Soft Marshmallow Company painted on its side, saw the water rushing towards it and veered off the street to escape the flood – only to rumble right onto the front lawn of Tremorton High School. The truck hit the school statue and tipped over on its side, puncturing its large tank – and sending a breathtaking geyser of thick, white, marshmallow fluff gushing into the air.

Riding a pair of blue exhaust flames, Jenny landed back inside the cafeteria – which now had no roof – and set the disoriented pilots down, as globs of fluffy marshmallow goo splattered down on her. Everyone and everything was being covered in a thick layer of white dessert topping, like a sugary snowfall. Jenny's head flipped open to deploy a small blue umbrella, shielding her from the marshmallow shower, but nothing could shield her from the death-stares she was getting from her fellow students. She didn't notice Brit and Tiff, who had shielded themselves with lunch trays over their heads, laughing like crazy as they thoroughly enjoyed her humiliation. Instead, she just deployed a mop from her elbow, and cracked a weak smile, chuckling nervously. But she looked like she wanted to die.

Back at the rear of the cafeteria, Brad winced in empathy as he watched Jenny start to clean up the amazing mess. He pulled a handful of thick white slop out of his hair, and flung it to the floor in disgust. "I have to admit, if you told me when I woke up that I was going to be drowned in marshmallow today, I'd have said you were nuts. Well, c'mon guys, we'd better see if she needs any help."

Drew examined a blob of marshmallow on the end of his finger, and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I might as well do _something_ useful for a change. Let's go." He got up to join Brad, morphing his flexible arms with a gooey _schwerrp_ until they'd turned into a large bulldozer blade.

"Hang on, guys! I'll help out too!" Sheldon began to wipe the creamy fluff from the table, and cleaned off the covers of Jenny's textbooks. _Poor Jenny_, he thought to himself. _My poor, sweet angel._ Sure, it had been painful to see her throw herself at another guy – let alone a big dumb jerk who didn't even care about her! – but it had been even more painful to see her embarrassed like this. All because she just wanted a guy to like her and take her to the prom. Why couldn't she see that he wanted _to be_ that guy for her? He'd tried to set up a special dinner for her, he'd brought her a present, and she hadn't even noticed! What did a guy have to do to get her attention …

Then Sheldon noticed that Drew had left his Physics textbook on the table.

And he could see the corner of an envelope sticking out from the front cover. The envelope that held the mysterious note that Drew had been so secretive about.

It wouldn't be right to look, he knew. Drew said it was personal. But curiosity began to gnaw away at his resolve. Sheldon glanced over to see that Brad and Drew had joined Jenny in the marshmallow cleanup. They weren't paying attention to him. One little peek wouldn't hurt. Just at the envelope. He nudged the cover of the Physics text open, and saw that the envelope had handwriting on it …

Which read … _To Jenny._

Sheldon's cheeks raged with red fury in the span of a microsecond. _I knew it! I knew that no-good bucket of slime was going to make a move on my Jenny!_ Without another moment's delay, he opened the envelope, unfolded the letter, started to read it … and his jaw nearly fell off of his pimply face.

"Dear Jenny, by the time you read this note … I'll be on my way to Cluster Prime."

_Yipes_, he thought.

He quickly flew through the rest of the letter, then he read it a second time, and a third, just to make sure he hadn't misunderstood anything. Sheldon stood dumbstruck for a few seconds, too stunned to do anything but stare off into space.

Then a thought came to him. Then that thought grew into an idea. Then that idea grew into a plan. A dangerous plan, but then, the love of a girl like Jenny was worth any risk. Quickly and carefully, he folded the letter back up, placed it in the envelope, and slid it back into Drew's Physics textbook, carefully making sure he returned it just the way he'd found it. Then he started to form a mental checklist of what needed to be done next. First of all, he needed to fake the stomach flu or something, so the nurse would send him home for the afternoon. Because he had work to do back in his laboratory. He had a lot of stuff to get done in the next three hours.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Seven / Twenty-seven Hours to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	7. Let's Have a Talk

A/N – Just wanted to say thank you to all my readers and reviewers, especially the ones who have left reviews over the holiday season. I know it gets crazy busy over the holidays, and I appreciate everyone who took the time to keep up with the story. I know this sounds goofy, but I miss you guys when you don't review! Anyway, I imagine that everyone should be back into their routines by now.

Well, less than two weeks to go until a new season of Teenage Robot. Five new episodes starting Monday, January 24th, every night for a week. Back when I started this trilogy, I had hoped to be done before Season Two started, but that ain't gonna happen. So once again, remember that this trilogy takes place before Season Two (or the Christmas special) takes place.

Oh, and as for "or as the Italians called it,_ savoir-faire_" … I know it's French, not Italian. Eh … it was written in Sheldon's POV, and it was supposed to be funny. Well, it was supposed to be.

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Seven – Let's Have a Talk

* * *

The briefing tent at the Starship Camp was even busier than it had been yesterday, and the air was ripe with urgency and tension. A semi-circle of pedestals at the front of the tent held large maps and charts, detailing the planned positioning of the Space Defense Forces for the impending Cluster invasion. Computer screens showed the latest research and intelligence retrieved from the starship, in hopes of gleaning some speck of data that might possibly give Earth an edge in the coming battle. General Brohammer had been talking about fleet strength and weapons loadouts for over half an hour, and Jenny was having a hard time concentrating on his endless stream of charts and numbers. She would have found all that stuff boring under the best of conditions – and she was still very upset over the disastrous day she'd had at school. Not to mention, it was hard to focus on charts and lectures with her mom fastening dozens of sensors all over her metallic body.

Brohammer tapped a button on the holographic briefing table, and a three-dimensional grid phased into view. "Now here, we see how the Cluster battle groups will make their approach to Earth. Small skirmish groups will come up from below the ecliptic as a diversion, while their main battle fleet jumps out of hyperspace right here, using the moon as cover. We're going to send our ships _after_ the diversion, and let the bug-heads think their little decoy is working. But we're going to have a surprise of our own waiting for the main fleet. That's where you come in, XJ-9 … XJ-9?" The general raised his voice in annoyance. "I hate to _bother_ you with this, little lady, but it's _kind_ of important!"

"I'm listening, I'm listening … _yeeowch!_ Mom, watch where you stick that thing!" She winced as her mother secured the last sensor probe right between her eyes. Ignoring her protests, the doctor connected the other end of the wire to a portable field scope, and started taking readings from the monitor.

"_Hmmm_ … I do not see any problems with your power outputs at the moment, XJ-9." Mrs. Wakeman tapped a pencil against her nose, deep in analytical thought, then flipped open her daughter's chest plate to inspect her electronics. "Nor does there appear to be anything amiss with your primary or secondary bus circuits. Are you _certain_ that you experienced a power surge?"

"Oh believe me," groaned Jenny, "I'm _certain_. And so is Justin Spitzer and the rest of kids in the cafeteria. _Gawd_, I can't believe I spazzed out in front of Justin like that …"

The general glared at Jenny impatiently; he was the kind of man who didn't tolerate being ignored. "If I'm _bothering_ you, maybe I could send a message along to Queen Vexus. Ask her to _reschedule_ the invasion for sometime next week. Would that be a better time for you?"

Jenny fought back the urge to scream _yes it would!_, and gave the general a pleading look through her cocoon of wires. "I'm _really_ sorry, General, but this is important too! I don't think this Z-Doohickey is working right! Ever since my mom turned it on, I've been having nothing but problems with it. I can hardly control my strength anymore! And it looks like somebody welded a big ugly _oil barrel_ onto my back! I'd be better off fighting without it!"

"Preposterous!" snapped Dr. Mogg, who was holding a large scanning device. "Without my Z-Pack, there is simply _no way_ that Nora's robot can possibly defeat the Cluster. Besides, there's no problem with my invention. See?" He waved his scanner over Jenny's belly, and a row of small blinking green lights lit up. "The Z-Pack is working absolutely _perfectly_."

"All right then, let's change horses for a second," sighed the general. "Dr. Plink, what can you tell me about your nanobot research? Do we have a usable weapon?"

Plink picked up a small plastic scale model of a Cluster Stealth Wasp – almost dropped it – and pointed to a long cannon attachment on its belly. "Well, it should be no trouble to affix the … _glah_ … Slurry Projector to the bottom of the Stealth Wasp. It's just a couple of bolts here and there, a few welds … maybe a dab of Krazy Glue … _bwah_ … but there's two problems. First, a special flight code is needed to activate the Stealth Wasp's systems. _Oooh,_ so _sneaky,_ that is! We think we can get the code from a captured pilot-drone, but so far … _nyaah_ … he ain't talkin'."

"I know about the flight code problem," said Brohammer, massaging his forehead. "We've got a team of experts working on the Cluster prisoner now. What's the second problem?"

"This is!" Plink turned towards a large stainless steel tank, with a huge rotating attachment, that looked for all the world like a mixer from some giant's kitchen. He turned a valve on the side of the tank, and with a sickening _glug_, a small nozzle belched out a glob of silver-green goo that splattered against a metallic target plate. Plink crossed his fingers, hoping that the blob would start to devour the target … but instead, it simply bubbled obnoxiously, then with a quick _poof_, it disintegrated into a pile of gray ash.

"I could have _told_ you that was going to happen," said a muffled voice from inside the tank. Drew's head sprang up on a flexible stalk, wearing a frustrated face, while the rest of his doughy body was churned and kneaded like cake batter. "If you slice off a piece of my body, it just turns into ash!"

"_Bwa-haw_, I realize that, but I have … _glah_ … high confidence that I can find a solution to …"

"Based in _what_, Einstein?!?" Drew's voice grew more irate, until he was shouting angrily at the professor. "I haven't been able to figure out how my stupid body works after months and months and _months_, and _you_ think you're gonna figure it all out in one night? And this _mixer_ is your best idea so far? Geez, did you get your college degree out of a _gumball machine_ or something?!?"

Everyone in the tent stopped what they were doing, distracted by the sudden outburst. Jenny craned her neck around to watch her android friend; Drew looked tense and upset, and she worried that he might say something that would get him in trouble. But instead, he just lowered his head. "I … I'm sorry, Dr. Plink … General … um, sir. I'm just a little … nervous … I guess. I … uh … listen, can we just take a break here? I'm getting a little tired of spinning around inside this giant Cuisinart."

"Very well," growled the general, glancing at his watch. "At ease, everyone. And son … I _suggest_ you get your head on straight before we continue, understand? There's a _lot_ of work to be done."

"Believe me, I know," said Drew, rolling his eyes to himself. He poured himself out of the steel tank, resumed humanoid form, and slowly walked towards the tent's exit, glancing left and right, nervously twiddling his fingers together. Jenny squirmed around on her portable platform, frustrating her mother's efforts to take scanner readings, and watched her friend loiter by the tent flap. She really did worry about Drew these days – he was the only other teenage robot on Earth, after all – but he looked terrible, and a little depressed, and she wondered if he would ever be the same again …

Then he spoke up. "J-Jenny? Uh … can I talk to you for a minute? Outside?"

_Finally_ – maybe she could talk some sense into him. She ripped off the sensor wires – much to the chagrin of her mother – leapt off her platform and rushed to the exit, still not quite used to the way the Z-Pack threw her off-balance. She gave Drew a reassuring smile, which he tried to return, unsuccessfully … then they stepped outside.

It was a perfect spring day in Tremorton, with a brilliant sun and warm breeze that were tailor made for playing in the park. But the only sounds in the park today were of heavy motors, busy soldiers, and the whine of hovercrafts gliding overhead. The gargantuan carcass of the downed Cluster starship still dominated the landscape, and military vehicles buzzed all around it, with army scientists and technicians constantly streaming in and out, to scavenge it for new technology. Jenny and Drew hopped out of the way as a loader rolled by with a pair of ground-to-space missiles. "A little noisy out here for a talk," said Jenny, shouting to be heard over the loader's engine.

"I think you're right," replied Drew. "Let's duck inside one of these supply tents."

The teen robots slipped inside a small tent filled with wooden and plastic crates, and closed the flap behind them, which reduced the outside noise to a more tolerable level. Now that they had some privacy, Drew paced back and forth for a few seconds, pushing the silver-green hair out of his eyes … then he turned to face Jenny, who was waiting patiently with her hands clasped together.

"Sorry about that, Jenny … " – he gulped hard, steadying his voice – "… I just needed to get out of there for a little bit. I think I'm okay now."

"Well I _don't_ think you're okay," she said, her voice filled with unease. "Drew, what is going _on_ with you? Just look at you! You look like you're about to fall apart! And you nearly bit Dr. Plink's head off in there. Sure, he's a little bizarre, but that's no reason to shout at him! What's the _matter_ with you ?!?"

"I know, I know, I know … I've been, uh, acting a little freaky the past couple of days."

"A _little_ freaky? Try a _lot_."

He nervously rubbed at the back of his head. "Yeah … I … I know …"

She stepped closer to him, and put a metallic hand on his shoulder. "I know this is _hard_ for you. I know you miss Allison. I miss her too … so I can only imagine how you feel." Then she raised her hand to his chin, and lifted his eyes to meet hers. "I can only _imagine_, because you won't _tell_ anyone how you feel! Drew, we've barely talked ever since we got back from Cluster Prime. You're just moping around with this huge black cloud over your head!"

"I know, I know …" He shuffled nervously from one foot to the other.

"I don't like seeing you like this! You're my friend, Drew … and I'm _your_ friend. I care about you … and you need to _remember_ that. You need to stop pushing away the people who are trying to help you." Jenny paused for a moment, then continued, with a warm smile on her face. "We've been through an awful lot together over the last few months, haven't we? Remember when I was modeling those diamonds and acting all snooty? And when you saved my mom from Vexus? And when I set you up on that blind date with my little sister?" Jenny chuckled, coaxing a weak smile out of him, and went on. "We androids have to stick together, right?"

Drew's smile began to quiver slightly. "I _really_ miss her, Jen," he said, his voice barely a whisper.

"I know, but you've got to try and feel _better_," she continued. "Making yourself totally miserable isn't going to help Allison, is it?"

He took a deep breath – he didn't need the oxygen, but it still had a calming effect – and shook his head. "You're right … feeling miserable isn't going to help her."

Jenny felt a glimmer of optimism; maybe Drew was finally coming out of his self-imposed isolation. "Tell you what. After we're done with all this boring briefing garbage, let's call Brad and get together at Mezmer's for sodas. And oil for me, and silverware for you," she giggled. "Or maybe just the two of us, robot-to-robot. You'll feel better after you finally start talking about things."

Drew looked up with calm eyes, and smiled for the first time that day. "Jenny, I … I don't tell you this often enough … but you've been a really good friend to me. The accident with the nanobots … trying to figure out how to live as a robot … I wouldn't have been able to hack it if it weren't for you. I'm lucky to have you as a friend, and I just wanted to say … I just wanted to say thanks."

"Aw, Drew …" She wrapped her arms around him in a warm embrace, and he hugged her back …

"And …" – he sighed – "… I'm sorry."

Jenny blinked her eyes in confusion. "_Sorry?_ Why would you say …"

She didn't feel the cool press of his fingers against the back of her head until it was too late. The nano-computers in his fingertips hummed with activity, and quickly interfaced with her master computer, overriding her higher brain functions. Her sleep command was triggered, and she had a vague sensation of consciousness leaving her mind as the world began to grow fuzzy. Her hard drives spun down, her memory banks went dormant, and her CPUs went into low-power mode. She just had time to register a look of surprise on her face before her eyes glazed over in a frosty blue, and her metallic eyelids slid down with a soft _whirr_. Drew held her tight as her servo motors shut down, and she slumped into his chest, reduced to a titanium rag doll.

Drew carefully laid the sleeping robot girl down on the floor of the tent – positioning her on her side, due to the Z-Pack – and pulled an envelope out of his chest with a syrupy _glurp_. He tucked the envelope, which read _To Jenny_, in her hands, and took a few steps back to collect himself. He felt terribly guilty, but it had to be done – Jenny would _never_ let him try something as stupid as the stunt he was about to pull. He briefly thought about chickening out … then he began to warble with patterns of silver-green, and a wave of multicolored distortion washed over his body. His malleable form stretched a few inches taller, his shoulders broadened, and his shiny surface repainted itself into a dark olive military uniform. He took one last moment to calm down, then he opened the tent flap and walked outside.

* * *

"All right men, we've gotta get this equipment loaded onto _these_ pallets, and moved into _that_ hangar! C'mon, c'mon, we don't have all day. The sooner we get done, the sooner we can all break for chow!" Lieutenant Olsen, just one year out of officer school, didn't have a particularly spectacular assignment – heck, most of the assignments in the army were 99 percent boredom – and he tended to overcompensate for it with his youthful enthusiasm. He drove his men with tireless efficiency, but he often wished that he'd gotten one of the more exciting posts in the army. Maybe something in a foreign country, or even one of the Mars bases – anything but working in Supply.

His platoon was working up a sweat in the afternoon sun, loading heavy boxes of scientific equipment into the giant starship's hangars for the eggheads to play with. It wasn't a much different in principle than his job stocking groceries in high school, and it was about half as interesting …

Suddenly one of his young privates pointed into the sky. "Hey! You guys see that?!?"

One by one his troops set their heavy crates down and pointed into the sky, towards a mysterious disk that was hurtling in their direction. For an instant, Olsen wondered if it might be an attack – but as the disk grew closer, he sensed something … _familiar_ about it, like he'd seen it somewhere before. It swooped down majestically, slowing to a hover directly over their heads, perched on flames of rocket exhaust. Twenty soldiers stared up at a fifteen-foot wide spinning saucer, their eyes wide with astonishment …

Then the lieutenant's jaw dropped open as the giant saucer split up into pieces, and began to transform into a robot before his very eyes. Wedges of the saucer rotated and pivoted to form arms and legs, and a grinning head popped up from a Herculean metal chest, adorned with a stylish spiral. The robot struck a bodybuilder's pose in mid-air, and slammed to the ground with thunderous force …

"Holy corn fritters!" gasped a freckle-faced private.

"No stinkin' way!" shouted a pudgy, crew-cut corporal.

Despite his military training, Olsen was grinning like a little boy who'd just met his favorite baseball player. "It's … it's …"

The massive robot grinned smugly, and perched his fists on his hips. "EXCELSIOR!"

Lt. Olsen ran up to gawk at Tremorton's legendary robot hero. "The _Silver Shell!_ Oh wow … wait'll I tell the guys back at the barracks! Mr. Shell, do you think I could get your autograph …" Olsen gradually became aware that his men were laughing at his boyish giddiness, and he quickly snapped back into a more military demeanor. "_Cough, cough,_ I mean … excuse me, sir, this is a military installation and a controlled access area. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"Fear not, my good lieutenant," boomed the Shell, "for I am here to offer my services as a hero to the commander of this base!" He thrust a melodramatic fist into the air, and spoke in a rich baritone. "In this grave hour, when the Earth is menaced by an unspeakable evil horde, I, the Silver Shell, would pledge to stand shoulder to shoulder with you and your fine fighting men! To defend the innocent, protect the good, and thwart evil in all its forms!"

Cheers rang up from the men as the lieutenant eagerly shook the mighty robot's hand. "This is great news, Mr. Shell! Really great news! Man, I still have the newspaper clipping from when you beat up that runaway robotic bull – I can hardly wait to see what you do to those lousy Cluster roaches! I'll call the general and let him know you're here. Say … um, do you think that, later on, you could …"

"Tell you what," beamed the Shell. A thin slot opened up in his chest, and out popped an extendable arm with a digital camera mounted on it. "Why don't we take some photos of me, with you and your men?"

Lt. Olsen struggled to contain his excitement. "Oh wow, Mr. Silver Shell, that would be absolutely incredible. Oh wow. If there's anything I can ever do for you, you just name it!"

A sly smile came to the Shell's metallic face. "Well, you … _could_ give me a tour of the starship."

* * *

"XJ-9? XJ-9? _XJ-Niyun!_" Mrs. Wakeman stormed out of the briefing tent with a scowl on face, wondering just what the _blazes_ her daughter was up to now. "I cannot _fathom_ how a girl with an atomic clock integrated into her brain manages to be so consistently late all the time! XJ-9! XJ-9, Andrew, where _are_ you?!?" She shielded her eyes with her clipboard and scanned the camp – even amongst all of the tents, shelters, vehicles, and soldiers, one would think that a six-and-a-half-foot metal girl would stand out. But there was no trace of her anywhere.

Phinneas Mogg stepped out of the tent behind her, with a smug little smile on his face. "So it still thinks it's a teenager, does it, Nora? Amazing. The fate of the entire human race is at stake, and your 'daughter' is off … what, checking the mall for shoe sales?"

Mrs. Wakeman gave Mogg a nasty glance, partly mad at him for zinging her with yet another verbal pot-shot, and partly mad because she suspected he might be right. "Just don't you worry about my XJ-9, Phinneas. I programmed her well … she knows that her primary responsibility is to save the Earth, and battle against the forces of evil!" Her shoulders slumped with an exasperated sigh. "She just … occasionally takes a little side trip to the mall _on the way_ to battle."

General Brohammer burst out of the tent, looking like his reservoir of patience was _just_ about exhausted. "Dr. Wakeman? _Consarn it_, Doctor, what is the holdup out here? We have a schedule to keep …"

"I know, I know," she said, as she fished inside one of the pockets of her yellow lab coat. She pulled out a small metal cylinder, pressed a button, and it quickly unfolded and expanded into a small communications monitor. She tried to give her daughter a call, but strangely, the screen remained dark, except for the stylized XJ-9 logo with its cute little smile. "The caller you are trying to reach is not in service at this time," said a synthesized voice. "Please hang up, and try your call again later."

A puzzled look came to Mrs. Wakeman's face. "Not in service? I don't understand …" She didn't even get her voice mail; what on Earth was going on?

Suddenly they heard a voice shout out to their right. "Hey! Who da heck put dis in here? Geez, dis tent is _only_ supposed ta be used ta store food and medicine. Who stuck dis _robot_ in here?"

_Robot?!?_ Mrs. Wakeman exchanged confused glances with Mogg and the general, and then all three of them ran the thirty yards to the small supply tent, where a pair of soldiers were standing and scratching their heads. She darted between the soldiers, tossed back the tent flap …

And saw her robotic daughter stretched out on the ground, leaning on her side, and _snoring_ loudly.

The general was growing more incensed by the second; he wanted answers, and he wanted them now. But Mrs. Wakeman ignored him and dropped to her daughter's side, with a twinge of motherly concern mixed in with her irritation. She grabbed a screwdriver and flipped open XJ-9's cranial access panel, probing around for the manual startup switch … it was in there somewhere … _click_.

Motors spun up to speed and systems came back on-line, and Jenny bolted up to a sitting position, stretching her arms high above her head. "_Yawwwwwnn_ … oh, _wow_, my aching servos. Oh … hi there Mom! What's going on … _ummm_ … why is everybody staring at me?"

Her mother folded her arms, with a scolding glare. "XJ-9, what on Earth made you decide to take a _power nap_ in the middle of the day? You haven't been working _that_ hard."

Jenny gave her mother a nasty look. "I didn't take a _power nap_, Mom, I was just talking … with …" – it all came flooding back to her – "… _Drew!_ I don't believe it, Mom, Drew _put_ me to sleep! We were talking … and then I gave him a hug … and then that sneaky little … _ooooh,_ and after I was all worried about him! Why that …" She balled her hands into a pair of angry fists, and only then, realized that she was holding on to something. An envelope – with her name on it.

"What the …" – she ripped open the envelope, and unfolded the letter …

"Oh, no. _No, no, no_. Mom, where's Drew? Has anyone seen him? We have to find him, _now_!"

While Jenny tried to explain to her mother just what had happened, the general grabbed a walkie-talkie from his belt, and dialed it to the command frequency. Something about the way that the android boy had been acting earlier was bothering him; this whole sideshow was setting off his well-honed instinct for smelling trouble. "This is General Brohammer to all units. Be advised, we are attempting to locate one Andrew Nabholtz, male teenage android, six feet tall, silver with green stripes. The shape-shifter who's been working with Dr. Plink. He's needed immediately for the defense strategy meetings. If you see him, please escort him back to me, at the Briefing Tent."

A series of quick confirmations squawked back over the walkie-talkie … and then one of the security detail asked a question. "General, sir? Please confirm, you want us to bring him to the Briefing Tent?"

"Affirmative, Captain," he barked into the handset. "That's where I am."

There was an awkward silence, then … "Begging your pardon, sir, but I just _passed_ you at the security checkpoint. You were heading inside the starship."

"Inside the starship? I haven't been anywhere near …" – then realized who they were looking for: a _shape-shifter._ The general looked down at Jenny, who was showing her mother the letter, with cold, squinting eyes. "Tell me everything, XJ-9. _Now._ What in blazes is your little friend trying to pull?"

* * *

The room wasn't much bigger than an average school classroom, and after it had been filled with banks of computers and monitoring devices, it felt even smaller still. One of the many secondary equipment rooms in the Cluster starship had been converted into a makeshift research lab, and a pair of experts, who were among the best cryptographers in the country, had been flown in just for this special (and somewhat strange) project. They hammered away at their keyboards, trying to make sense of the alien computer software, desperately looking for a needle in a binary haystack. Two armed guards stood vigilantly just inside the door of the lab, keeping a watchful eye on their unusual prisoner. But they didn't expect too much trouble out of him – after all, they'd unfastened his arms and legs.

"Organic oppressors! Do your worst! You will get no flight code from me, flesh lumps!" Most of the roach-drone crew had been blasted to pieces when the Space Marines had stormed the starship, and many of the rest had successfully activated their memory-wipe fail-safes. Protecting the Cluster's secrets was more important than any individual drone's life, after all. But unfortunately for pilot drone GXZ-9966-Q, he had been knocked offline instead of being completely destroyed. Three days ago, the humans had reactivated him in this lab – with his limbs and engines removed, and with dozens of wires snaking into his metallic torso and dome-shaped head. They had interrogated him, verbally and via computer linkup, nonstop ever since. But they had gotten nothing from him.

"I've never seen a firewall this sophisticated before," groaned one of the human scientists. "Aw, crap! Another dead end!" He slapped his monitor in frustration.

The pilot-drone let out an obnoxious, synthesized laugh. "Foolish primates! You cannot even conquer a single Cluster drone. Soon Queen Vexus will come to liberate me, and _all_ of the oppressed robots on this primate-infested planet! We will be free at last! Free at last! Thank Cog Almighty, free at last!"

The other scientist shook his head. "For Pete's sake, will you please take out his speech processor …"

The lab doors slid open, and a tall, thin man in a white lab coat walked in, glancing casually at the flat-panel monitors. He had a receding hairline, and looked to be in his forties – which would have made him twenty years older than either of the cryptography experts. He was holding a shiny computer disk in his hand, twiddling it nervously between his fingers, when one of the scientists finally noticed him.

"Yeah, whaddaya want? We're a little busy in here."

"Hmm? Oh, uh, I just brought along a disk of some new code-cracking software. Some guys at Tremorton Tech think it'll speed things up. Hey …" – he gestured to the Cluster robot – "… how are things going? You getting any information out of him?"

"Nah, nothing at all," growled the young scientist, as he snatched the disk. "That moron Plink is on my case, Brohammer calls us every hour for status reports, and now some bunch of hacks at Trem Tech think they can do my job for me? I'd like to see them try and decode a five-dimensional matrix of …" He turned the disk over in hands to examine it, and _harrumphed_ in frustration. "Is this some kind of joke? This is an AOL disk, you moron!"

"Uh, yeah, I know … I just ripped it out of a magazine I found in the trash." The tall, middle-aged man flexed his fingers … which began to shimmer with veins of silver-green …

The guards gasped with momentary surprise, then grabbed their pistols and ordered the stranger to get on the floor with his hands behind his head. Instead, he twisted around and swung an arm through the air with a haymaker punch. Faster than the blink of an eye, his arm _stretched out_ and punched one of the guards – standing ten feet away – in the chin, knocking him to the floor, out cold. The other arm turned into a speeding tentacle that slammed a fist into the second guard's stomach. Both guards lay moaning in a heap by the door; the two young cryptographers had dived under their desk to cower in terror.

"So our friend here doesn't have too much to say," said the tall man, as his shimmering arms flowed back to his sides. His entire body gurgled into a shimmering pillar of silver-green molasses, and a moment later Drew had reformed into his default, green-striped appearance. He glared at the helpless Cluster roach-drone, like a jaguar watching an antelope, and sensed a hint of robotic fear in the drone's eyes. He raised his right hand, so the roach-drone could watch his fingers grow into long, silver claws, each tipped with countless nano-computers. The drone could do nothing but watch as the silver-green hand came down against his domed head. He could feel the his firewalls being bypassed as the nano-computers ran through their adaptive subroutines …

"But y'know, I think he'll talk to me," said Drew, as the pilot-drone's eyes glazed over. "You'll give me that flight code for the Stealth Wasp, won't ya, buddy? And hey, why you're at it … why don't you tell me _everything_ you know about flying that thing."

* * *

Continued in Chapter Eight / Twenty-three Hours to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	8. No Turning Back

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Eight – No Turning Back

* * *

"This is General Brohammer to all units. All units, I am ordering Security Lockdown Level Three. I want every entrance to that ship closed off!" The tone of his voice added: _and I want it done five minutes ago_. He growled with genuine anger, but his granite face hid a feeling of dread deep in the pit of his stomach. Even as he marched towards the security checkpoint which guarded the ramp to the starship's bridge, his mind was putting together a situation analysis. He'd always had a talent for taking seemingly unrelated facts and stitching them together into the big picture. And he didn't like the picture he saw right now, not one bit. "General Brohammer to all units, I am ordering the _immediate_ detention of Andrew Nabholtz. He may be on his way to the flight hangar. If he resists, use of force _is_ authorized."

"_What!?!_" gasped Jenny, as she raced across the grounds to catch up with the grizzled old soldier. The general's order had sent the entire base scrambling into a frenzy of activity; sirens shattered the air with a piercing wail. Jenny suddenly found herself dodging and weaving through a crowd of soldiers sprinting towards pre-assigned positions – and carrying _submachine guns_. "_Overreact_ much?!? General, what the heck are you _doing_?!? Okay, maybe Drew's acting a little crazy, but he's not _dangerous_!"

"Boy's hands can turn into giant blades that slice through concrete," he shot back. "That not dangerous enough for you?" Brohammer showed his ID to the checkpoint guard, and pressed his thumb against a fingerprint scanner. "Wouldn't you agree he's acting irrationally? Behaving suspiciously?"

"Well, yeah, but … I mean, come on! He's been through a lot, General!" Jenny clasped her hands together, pleading. "Just let me talk to him! We go to school together. He's my friend!"

"A friend who just attacked you and rendered you unconscious," Brohammer said matter-of-factly. He snapped his walkie-talkie to his mouth. "All units, begin a sweep through the ship …"

Everything was moving too quickly for her. "This is _nuts!_ Why are you _doing_ this?!?"

The general turned and stared at her with stone cold eyes. "The boy takes off, _after_ hearing a detailed briefing on our defense strategy and secret plans for fighting the Cluster. He hoodwinks you into a supply tent so he can shut you _off_, then gives you a note saying that he's flying off to _Cluster Prime_ of all places – on the day before they launch a massive attack against us. He's already committed a federal crime by impersonating a military officer. And you've said yourself, he's _plum loco_ over that robot girl that was captured by Queen Vexus. It all adds up to one thing – he's a security risk. He has sensitive information that could be used to bargain for the robot girl's freedom."

"Bargain? _Security risk?!?_ What are you _saying_?!?"

Brohammer checked the energy clip on his pistol, and switched off the safety. "I believe that Andrew Nabholtz may be trying to defect."

Jenny's jaw nearly came unhinged. "No! That's _crazy!_ Drew would never betray us …"

"We don't know that for sure, and we can't afford to take the chance," he said, as he gestured for a pair of soldiers to accompany him. "My priority is the safety and security of the planet Earth. If you care about your friend, XJ-9 … then the best thing you can do for him is _stop_ him."

* * *

Hangar Two was an immense, green-walled metal cavern that could have easily held two football fields, but it held something of much greater value to the Earth's military: a full compliment of fully functional Cluster spaceships. Workers and scientists prowled all around the insect-like craft, examining them for useful intelligence and scientific study. The task of guarding the ships and the scientists fell to a group of twenty soldiers, who had been grousing about their 'babysitting' duty until the security emergency had been declared. Their squad leader hadn't quite believed the general's order at first, but he sent back an acknowledgement on his radio, and confirmed that the hangar entrance was sealed, and the massive ten-story-tall sliding doors were locked shut. Now he and his men were fanning out over the huge hangar deck, scanning the shadows for anything that looked like it didn't belong.

"Keep sharp, boys," said the sergeant, walking between two rows of stacked barrels. "Just got word that the android attacked a pair of guards and left a drone prisoner babbling like a lunatic."

"Man, and here I thought the guy was kind of _all right_," said a young corporal, his voice sad with disillusionment. "Hey sarge – how the heck are we supposed to find a shape shifter, anyway? I mean … he could look just like me. He could look just like _you_. How am I s'pose to know that you're really you, anyway? I mean, you could say that you're you, but then even if you _weren't_ you, you'd still say that you're you to make me _think_ you're you …"

"Shaddup," groaned the sergeant, as he checked behind a pile of barrels stacked against the wall. He thought he'd seen movement in the pile … maybe even from one of the barrels itself. Then he realized that one of the barrels was a shiny, silver color – with _green stripes_. He nervously edged closer and closer, with his rifle drawn, half expecting it to come to life and pounce on him at any moment. He was just a few feet away now, and the android hadn't made his move. He gingerly reached out and tapped on the top of the barrel with the muzzle of his gun … then he inched closer and rapped on it with his knuckles …

"Just a stupid barrel of oil," he mumbled, shaking his head. He turned to resume his search …

And tripped over a long, twisting fuel hose that snaked out of the wall and twisted across the deck – a fuel hose that hadn't _been_ there ten seconds ago. The sergeant spilled to the floor with a loud _thud_, and stared in amazement as the end of the hose raised itself off the floor and spawned a doughy, silver-green head with an annoyed face. "Oh, thanks a _lot_, Mister Dumb Luck!" shouted Drew. "Jeez, what's a guy gotta do to catch a _break_ around here?"

_So much for the element of surprise_. He catapulted himself into the air to avoid another charging soldier. Now the rest of the guards, fully alerted, came running in his direction, yelling for him to surrender. He bounced over their heads in a surreal splash of shiny molasses, a living fountain of quicksilver that flowed between legs and through their fingers. The soldiers fumed in frustration – trying to catch Drew was like trying to scoop up a bucket of water with a pasta strainer. With every swerve and every bounce, he drew closer and closer to his target …

The captured Cluster Stealth Wasp. True to its name, the sleek, tapered alien craft bore an uncanny resemblance to a fifty-foot yellow-and-black-striped insect. Barbed fins and stubby, jagged wings jutted out from its nose and midsection at odd angles, and its bulbous canopy had the appearance of an ugly, swollen eye. Its sleek belly was marred by an ugly, thirty foot long steel barrel that had just recently been bolted on – the infamous Plink Pudding Cannon. But more importantly, the Stealth Wasp had two other features not present on any other spacecraft in the hangar; a hyperdrive engine, and a cloaking device that the scientists believed could render it almost completely invisible. That made it perfect for Drew's outrageous plan. And the soldiers knew that.

Drew reverted to humanoid form and froze in shock, as a semi-circle of soldiers surrounded the Wasp and took aim at him their rifles. They gave him one final warning to surrender peacefully, then he heard the click of safeties being switched off. Terror gripped his gooey insides like a cold fist – it was unnerving to see the good guys pointing guns at you. _Well, it's not like I expected them to just let me take the darn thing_. With lightning quickness, he tackled the nearest soldier and dissolved his rifle into nano-goo. Then he grew a long, curved blade out of his right arm, and swung it viciously through the air – cutting a neat slice out of a nearby barrel of lubrication fluid. Super-slippery oil gushed onto the deck, and disorientated soldiers crashed onto their backs with their arms and legs flailing wildly …

But not all of them. Four soldiers rushed between Drew and the Wasp, and their rifles barked to life with automatic fire. The teen android frantically twisted his body into a silver-green pretzel, but dozens of bullets slammed into his chest anyway, each ballistic punch kicking up a splash of silvery sludge. Drew's body was becoming pockmarked with tiny craters, and more guards were on the way …

Then out of nowhere, the high-pitched scream of a buzzsaw filled the air. Drew watched in bewilderment as a large rotary blade punched through the thick metal deck plating. It was carving a circle out of the floor, right beneath the soldiers' feet! By the time the soldiers realized that something funny was going on, it was too late. With a deafening _clang_, the floor suddenly disappeared out from under them, and they plummeted out of sight to the next deck below. As Drew's body bubbled with self-repair activity, he heard the roar of powerful rocket engines, and a large figure streaked up through the newly carved hole …

"Looks like you've gotten yourself into quite the pickle here," smirked the Silver Shell.

"YOU!?!" babbled Drew, rubbing his eyes in disbelief. Of all the people in the world he _least_ expected to see right now … "What the heck are _you_ doing here?!?"

The Shell folded his arms with a cocky smile. "_Me?!?_ You're one to _talk_, mister. Stealing an alien spaceship from the military, to fly on an illegal rescue mission to Cluster Prime? Boy, that's not going to look good on your college applications."

Drew pushed his way past the towering robot hero to get to the Stealth Wasp, and with a twist of a handle, its canopy pivoted open like a giant clam. "Look, I don't have time for this. Okay, so you know what I'm doing. Then you should also know, I'm not gonna let you stop me!"

"_Stop_ you?" The Silver Shell leapt over Drew's head, and plopped himself down in the Wasp's rear seat. "I'm coming _with_ you."

Drew was utterly flabbergasted. "_Sheldon_, have you completely lost what passes for your insane little mind!?! Get you big shiny butt outta there before I …"

He was interrupted by a fresh round of shouting and gunfire, as a group of reinforcements poured into Hangar Two. Drew cringed as he saw the soldiers closing in on him; this was all going bad in a hurry, but he had come too far to stop now. His arm stretched over to the hangar's wall, and flipped a giant orange knife-switch. With a sharp metallic growl, the massive ten-story panels cracked open, and slowly began to roll apart. But he still had to get the Wasp powered up, and the soldiers were going to be on him in a matter of seconds …

Then the Silver Shell deployed a short cannon from his massive forearm, and launched a salvo of canisters in a protective circle around the ship. The canisters struck the deck plating and burst apart with jets of pressurized gas, forming a thick curtain of obnoxious green vapor. The instant the soldiers came into contact with it, they started to cough and clutch desperately at their throats. Then they dropped to the floor like flies, with shriveled faces, watering eyes, and the occasional twitching leg.

"A little something I whipped up out of some month-old gym socks," chuckled the Shell, staring down at the stupefied android. "So are you getting on board this thing, or what? Because I'm not getting out. And its' not like you have time to argue with me …"

"Buy why do … but you can't … but you're not coming with … _aarrrghhh!!!_" Drew grimaced and pulled his silver-green hair in frustration … then swung himself up and into the Stealth Wasp's front seat. Sheldon was right, he didn't have time to argue with him now; he wasn't even sure that he had time to get the engines started. _First things first._ He plugged one of his fingers into a data socket on the Wasp's control panel – right below the 3-D radar, where the pilot-drone's downloaded memory files had said it would be – and transmitted the secret flight code. Suddenly the instruments glowed to life in hues of red and blue and green, and a deep thrum vibrated through the fuselage of the Wasp, as it went through an automated startup sequence. _I can't believe that actually worked_, thought Drew, fighting back a wave of nervousness. _I just hot-wired a spaceship. Oh crap, what the heck am I doing?_

"So do you … _know_ how to fly this thing?" said the Shell, as he fastened himself into his seat.

"Well, if by 'know', you mean 'downloaded the manual', then … yeah, _sure_ I know." Drew morphed a data screen out of his left forearm to display a checklist, and started to push buttons and flip switches as quickly and carefully as he could. The whine of the Wasp's turbines grew higher in pitch. Needles on power gauges snapped to flight status. Pressure monitors climbed to one hundred percent. The canopy lowered and locked into place. Drew's fingers hovered cautiously over a pair of yellow-and-black-striped switches … then he gulped hard, closed his eyes, and flipped them on. A eerie, warbling howl emanated from the engines, and he felt a shudder run through the ship's metal frame …

Drew could see soldiers outside, pounding on the canopy, shouting for him to turn off the engines. He clasped his hands around the twin control sticks, mumbled a prayer, and pulled back. Nice and gentle, just like on Brad's GameStation. _Oh man, oh man, oh man …_

And the Stealth Wasp surged into the air like a bucking bronco, surprising him with its hair-trigger stick response. Drew grit his teeth and clenched the control sticks too tightly, struggling to get a feel for how the Wasp handled – the new addition of the Pudding Cannon was throwing it off balance. A sharp jolt shook the Wasp as its tail fin collided with the ceiling. _Oh jeez, I've been flying for five whole seconds and I already hit something!_ Then it lunged down again, and then it spun to the right, its motions growing wilder as Drew overcompensated with the maneuvering controls. Blasts of engine exhaust knocked the soldiers off their feet, and the engine stuttered intermittently for some unknown reason, like an old pickup truck that couldn't get out of first gear. Drew frantically scanned the instruments and tried to bring the Wasp to a steady hover. _C'mon, c'mon, c'mon …_

"_Aaaaaahhh!!!_ How are you going to get us to Cluster Prime if you can't even get us out of the _hangar_?" screamed the Shell, holding on for dear life.

Drew gradually brought the rocking motion under control, and nudged the Wasp towards the hangar doors. "Hey, it's my first hijacking, _alright_? So why don't you just keep quiet and … oh, _crap_."

The way outside was blocked by a hovering robot girl, with a ten-foot wide aqua-blue stop sign deployed from her hand.

Jenny did _not_ look happy.

She deployed a microphone from her chest, and her pigtails converted into a pair of bullhorns. "I'm only going to say this once, Drew … put the ship back down, _right now_." She propped her fists on her hips and glared right at Drew with a look that could have set an iceberg ablaze. She felt mad and hurt, upset and betrayed, and horribly worried all at the same time. She couldn't believe that the big idiot was actually going to _do_ something like this! Didn't he realize how much _trouble_ he was in?!? Didn't the soldiers with the machine guns give him a _clue_?!? And what in the world was the Silver Shell doing in the Wasp with him? How many _more_ friends was she going to lose to the Cluster?

She saw him shake his head through the Wasp's canopy, while it bobbled and rocked in mid-air just a few yards in front of her. "I can't do that, Jenny. I _am_ going back to Cluster Prime. Don't try to stop me." His eyes added, _please_.

"Have you two guys gone totally _psycho_?!?" she shouted over her PA, waving her arms in the air hysterically. "Drew, how do you expect to help Ally by getting yourself _killed_?!? Put the ship back down now, you big dummy, or I'll pull you out of there and kick your _butt_ to Cluster Prime!" _Come on, please, you're already in so much trouble, don't make it worse …_

"No, XJ-9, you don't understand!" yelled the Silver Shell, hoping to persuade her. "I know this seems unusual, but I'm doing this for _you_ … really!"

"For _me?!?_ How could you possibly be doing this for _me_?!? You're as crazy as _he_ is!!!" Why was the Shell going with him? Was he helping Drew? Were they _both_ really turning into criminals now?!? Why did stuff like this keep _happening_ to her?!?

Drew's hands tensed on the control sticks, and he gently nudged the Wasp backwards into the hangar, not liking any of his options at the moment. If he landed, he'd be arrested and thrown in jail. But how could he possibly get past Jenny without hurting her? His eyes flitted to a large red button on the end of the right control stick – the trigger for the Wasp's laser cannons. Just _how badly_ did he want to save Ally? "Jenny, if you're _really_ my friend, you'll get out of my way _right now_!"

She felt hot alcohol tears well up in her eyes; _what an unfair thing to say!_ "If you two were really _my_ friends, you wouldn't _make_ me stop you! But it looks like you guys aren't giving me _any choice!_"

Jenny's robotic arms ratcheted out to her sides, stretching over a hundred feet in length, and grabbed onto the massive, sliding hangar doors. _The big nutjob will have to land the ship if he doesn't have anywhere to go!_ Grimacing with intensity, she deployed a pair of clamps from each wrist to lock onto the giant doors. Then she pulled on them with all her might, reeling her arms back into her body, and sealing up the hangar bay once more. With the extra boost of power she got from the Z-Pack, the doors felt as light as a feather to her. But then she realized that the doors were closing too quickly; in her stressed condition, yet another power surge had supercharged her servos. The building-sized doors slammed together with a horrific crash, like a pair of colliding trains, sending a thundering vibration through the entire hangar …

And the ten-story panels heaved and buckled as if they were made of tinfoil. With an ear-splitting _screech_, the giant sliding panels broke free from their guide rails, and ripped away from the starship's hull. The panels, each larger than a baseball diamond, dropped towards a crowd of army technicians working underneath the ship, two hundred feet below. Jenny gasped in horror … _oh, cripes, it happened again_ … and those poor men were about to be flattened like insects! In a blaze of Z-Pack assisted super-speed, she rocketed out of the hangar and dove past the falling door panels like they were falling in slow motion. She knocked over fifteen men and two trucks when she landed, just from the force of the hurricane winds in her wake. But she was in time to extend her arms, and expand her hands to twenty times their normal size. She caught the fifty-ton metal plates with half a second to spare …

But now Hangar Two was completely open to the outside world. With Jenny busy on the ground, there was nothing standing in Drew's way. With the twist of a yellow handle, magnetic clamps released along the belly of the Stealth Wasp, and the Plink Pudding Cannon detached and smashed into the hangar deck. Then Drew slammed the control sticks forward, the Wasps's engines whined to full power, and the yellow-and-black spaceship shot out of the hangar like a bullet from a rifle barrel.

"Hoooo-leeeeee crap holy crap holy crap holy crap holy crap holy crap holy crap …" Trees, telephone poles, electrical towers, and a forest of other urban hazards screamed past them at insane speed, seemingly only inches away. The acceleration from the Wasp's engines mashed the robots deep into their padded seats; Drew felt like an elephant was sitting on his chest. He hadn't expected everything to happen so dang _fast_. And unlike Brad's GameStation, there was no "Pause" button on the console of _this_ spaceship. Roads and parking lots and buildings flashed by on either side of him in a blur of brick and asphalt, and the magnitude of what he'd just done began to sink in …

The Silver Shell lunged forward and pounded on the front seat. "LOOK OUT!" he shrieked, twisting Drew's head to face forward …

To see the glass-and-steel office towers of Tremerton's business district looming in front of him like a brick wall. Drew's fists wrapped around the control sticks in a death grip, and he yanked so hard that he nearly wrenched them clean off the instrument panel. The Wasp's nose snapped up with stunning agility, and the alien craft yanked itself skyward into a vertical climb, almost surfing the plate-glass windows of the Bank of Tremorton Building. The Shell grabbed onto his seat's armrests and screamed like a little girl; it was an effort of willpower for Drew just to keep his eyes open, and he could only imagine what was going through the minds of the terrified people inside the building. In seconds, the Wasp screamed past the building's antenna, punched through a scattering of puffy white clouds, and arced over into steady, level flight … except for the fact that it was upside-down.

"Why don't you watch where you're flying, you big dummy!!!" shouted the Shell, shaking his fists in mortified rage. "You're gonna get us both _killed_! Here, let me drive!" He reached for the back-seat control sticks and gave them a twist … sending the Steath Wasp through half a dozen gut-churning barrel rolls before finally coming to rest right-side-up.

Drew snapped his head around and stretched his neck to get right into the Shell's metal face. "Touch those sticks again and I'll _eat_ your stupid tin can suit for lunch, Sheldon! If you don't like it, you can jump out of the cockpit _right now_! What the _heck_ were you thinking when …"

His rant was cut short by a shrill, buzzing alarm on the instrument panel. Multiple colored blips flashed angrily on the radar scope, coming in fast at ten o'clock. Drew stared at the radar, not quite understanding or believing what he was seeing … then the sky around them lit up with a blinding green light. Bolts of seething plasma energy screeched across the nose of the Stealth Wasp, and seconds later they saw where the shots had come from: two huge, ominous-looking Skyway Patrol hovercraft. Their black-and-purple silhouettes emerged from a bank of clouds, like a pair of ravenous sharks on the lookout for their next meal. Except these sharks had plasma cannons deployed from their bellies.

"Attention stolen alien craft, this is Skyway Patrol," bellowed a powerful speaker. "That was your one and only warning shot. Land immediately, or we will be forced to destroy you!"

The Silver Shell's faceplate nearly fell off. "_Destroy us?!?_ Boy, they're not messing around, are they? M-m-maybe we better do as they say!"

"Not a chance. We're making a run for it. If you want to do something useful, see if you can get that cloaking device to work!" Drew brought a new file up on his data screen, tossed another row of switches, and the Wasp's fusion engine howled to life. A surge of raw power kicked him in the butt; it was as if the sun were exploding behind his back. The Wasp's nose pitched up into another vertical climb. A hail of lethal plasma bolts danced around the canopy like green rainfall, but the fusion engine was rapidly putting distance between the spaceship and the Skyway Patrol. The plasma bolts soon faded away, as did the deep blue color of the surrounding sky. Drew glanced sideways in awe, watching the horizon fall away into a brilliant blue curve that glowed starkly against perfect, infinite blackness. If he hadn't been so terrified, he might have thought it was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen in his life …

A pale blue streak blazed past him at terrific speed, nearly scaring him half to death. He curled the Wasp into a tight, lurching turn to get away from it, but the mystery object performed a stunningly loop-de-loop and nimbly pulled into a parallel course. Drew and the Shell twisted around in their seats, trying to see what was chasing them … then they looked straight up to see Jenny against a backdrop of stars, with her boosters deployed, frantically waving her arms to get their attention.

A speaker on the control panel crackled to life, and he heard Jenny's voice pleading with him over the radio link. "Drew, this is insane! Turn around and bring the spaceship back to the park! Guys, this is serious! The army thinks you're trying to _defect_ to the Cluster!"

He looked up at her with a pained expression – he knew he was betraying a good friend. "I don't care _what_ they think, Jenny! Ally risked her life to help us, and all those people, and nobody was going to do a _thing_ to help her back! That is such a …"

Another new alarm cried out from the panel, and Drew's eyes nearly leapt out of their sockets. "Incoming _missiles?!?_ _Geez,_ I didn't think they were gonna be _this_ ticked off at me!" Two air-to-space missiles had just boosted out of the atmosphere, and were rapidly closing on the Stealth Wasp. He grew another pair of silver-green arms, and desperately scanned his downloaded piloting files. "Hang on back there, I'm going to try to get the hyperdrive fired up! Crap, wish I had more time to do this …"

"Omigosh, guys, now they're shooting _missiles_ at you! You're going to get yourselves _killed!_"

Drew's four hands were flying madly over the controls. "Thanks for the _news flash_, Jen! Hey, Shell-dude, it sure would be nice to have a _cloaking device_ right about now, wouldn't it?!?"

The Silver Shell was frantically flipping switches on his own set of consoles. "I'm trying! Look, none of these controls are labeled in English! I don't speak _barcode_, all right?!?"

A new voice on the radio joined the tense conversation. "Attention Andrew Nabholtz, this is General Brohammer of the Space Defense Forces. You have two missiles locked on to your tail, and they are closing _fast_. Surrender and turn off your engines, and we'll abort the missiles. The XJ-9 will tow you safely back to the base. I can't let you go off to Cluster Prime, son. Come back home."

"Not gonna happen, general. I'm sorry." Drew activated the hyperdrive's power up sequence …

"General, you can't do this!" interrupted Jenny, desperate for some sanity. "He's not trying to defect!"

"All right, XJ-9," crackled the general's voice, "if you can disable the Wasp's engines, we'll abort the missiles. But I want him stopped by any means necessary. Is that understood, little lady?!?"

"O-o-okay, sir," she stammered, as she eased into another loop-de-loop to drop behind the Stealth Wasp. Now she was cruising just behind the insect-shaped ship, safely above the fiery plume of its fusion engine, easily matching its movements as they hurtled deeper into space. Jenny gulped hard, her eyes quivering slightly as her elbow cracked open. The familiar segments of her laser-limb slid out and snapped into place, and she took aim at the alien spaceship. _I'm about to shoot down my friends_, she winced to herself. The Wasp banked desperately left and right, but there was no way that it could possibly outmaneuver the teen super-robot. She could outfly anything in the air or in outer space, even more so now with her Z-Pack and all its limitless energy …

"Oh no …" she gasped. "General! I can't do this! What if I have another power surge from the Z-Pack when I fire?!? I'll blow them up!"

"Don't do it, Jen. Don't _do_ it." Hyperdrive power levels crept past fifty percent. They were climbing too slowly. Drew wasn't sure whether they could jump before the missiles hit …

"XJ-9, that ship is to be stopped by _any_ means necessary. That's a direct order!"

"There's got to be some other way …" Jenny looked behind her, and saw twin fiery pinpricks moving through the stars at spectacular speed. The missiles. "Drew, shut off the engines!"

"Locking in course and navigation vectors … uh, is that supposed to be a four or a nine? Aw, screw it. Hyperdrive at seventy-five percent … Yo, Double-S! Make with the cloaking device already!"

"It's not working!" yelled the Silver Shell, in a near panic. "I don't think you can use it at the same time as the hyperdrive. Missile impact in twenty seconds!"

"You'll be labelled a thief and a traitor, Andrew," said Brohammer. "Deserting your friends and family on the eve of alien attack – is that how you want your _parents_ to remember you?"

Drew cringed from the general's words, and flipped the safety cover off of a large red button. "Hyperdrive at ninety percent. Hang onto your lunch, Shell, I got no idea if this thing is going to work."

"Will you guys just come to your _senses_?" Jenny shouted in a frenzy. "There's still time! We can work this out! General, please, just stop the missiles!"

"Negative, XJ-9. Either fire on that ship or get out of the way."

"Missile impact in ten seconds!" shouted the Shell. "Turn on the hyperdrive!"

"It's not ready yet! Jenny, don't shoot! I've _gotta_ do this!"

Jenny's arm shook nervously as she pointed her laser-limb at the Wasp's engine. Firing on her friends might be the only way to save them from themselves, and from the missiles … or it might kill them right now in the depths of space. "Drew, turn those engines off right now! Turn them off! _Please!_"

"Okay, full charge on the hyperdrive. Oh, _crap_, here we go, here we go …"

"Son, you take that ship into hyperspace and you _will_ be charged with treason. You'll be tagged as a Cluster spy, and a collaborator, and an enemy of the World Senate. You will _never_ be able to set foot on the planet Earth again. _Never._"

"Five seconds to missile impact! _Gaaah_, I can't look!" The Shell clamped his hands over his eyes …

Alarms and sirens blared through the cockpit, and Drew closed his eyes, and jabbed a silver-green finger down hard on the red button. _I'm coming, Ally. I'm coming. Oh, crap, I must be out of my mind …_

Jenny grimaced with gut-wrenching agony, torn between her duty to protect the Earth and her loyalty to her friends. She watched the death-bringing missiles slice through space with amazing speed, homing in on the stolen Cluster Stealth Wasp … then they disappeared into a pair of explosions two seconds prior to impact. A pair of precision shots from Jenny's laser-limb had destroyed the weapons in the nick of time. Now, if she concentrated hard enough, maybe she could shoot out the spaceship's engines before …

The Stealth Wasp was suddenly enveloped in a cocoon of brilliant light and distorted space. A surreal kaleidoscope of color raged into existence around the ship, quickly swirling into a Technicolor vortex. The Wasp had the briefest appearance of being stretched, as if it were made of silly putty … then with a snap and a flash, it flung itself into the vortex, and disappeared from sight. The space-distortion dissipated away into nothingness. And there was nothing left but the stars.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Nine / Twenty-three Hours to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	9. Don't Make Me Turn This Spaceship Around

A/N – A few replies: mpcp13, I actually didn't remember that bit of info on the stealth wasp! It just seemed logical; either the cloak or the hyperdrive would use a lot of power, so you can't use both at the same time. Pickle, Brohammer is most certainly not an idiot; he simply has to worry about the safety of Earth first. It's his job. And thanks for reading! Paperwolf, gaaaah, stop shaking! My neck hurts! Glad you all enjoyed the tension at the end of the last chapter. Now, we continue …

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Nine – Don't Make Me Turn This Spaceship Around

* * *

Jenny's internal pumps kicked into emergency overdrive, moving coolant through her radiator loops at twice their maximum rated capacity in order to cool her down. Some of the excessive heat was coming from the curtain of burning plasma that raged around her; flying back through the atmosphere at Mach 20 had transformed her into a living meteor. But most of it was pouring out of her Mood-O-Tron chip as it blazed with a frenzy of emotions. Anger. _I can't believe that idiot actually did something so stupid!_ Sadness. _I'm never, never going to see Drew or the Silver Shell again…_ Fear. _He's going to get himself killed!_ Frustration. _I should have thought of a way to stop him._ Anger again. _How could he desert us all the day before Earth gets invaded?_ Still more Anger. _I can't believe that the general was going to blow him up! _In fact, the emotion chip remained locked on "Anger" all the way through her descent glide and return flight back to the Starship Camp – until she came to a landing in the cavernous interior of Hangar Two. Because when Jenny saw the look of fury on General Brohammer's face, her Mood-O-Tron snapped into "Anxiety" mode. _Cripes, am I ever in trouble now._

The veins on Brohammer's neck bulged out as if they'd been chiseled from a marble block. "XJ-9, you _let_ those two escape! We saw the whole thing on scanners – you destroyed the missiles and let them jump into hyperspace. And now those traitors are on their way to Cluster Prime! I could have you _arrested_, right now! You'd best explain yourself, little lady, 'cause I am hotter'n spit on a skillet!"

"I … I … I …" Jenny took a nervous half-step backwards – the general could be very intimidating when he wanted to – then she summoned her reserve of backbone, and stood up to him. "Stop calling them _traitors_! They're going to Cluster Prime to try and save Allison. They're _heroes_, and they're my _friends_, and there's _no way_ I am going to shoot at my friends!"

"You'll do it if I _order_ you to, little missy!" growled the general, through clenched teeth. Then he stopped himself, took a calming breath, and ran a hand through his graying hair. "All right, for argument's sake, let's say that he's _not_ defecting. Then he's _still_ putting himself at incredible risk. If he gets captured, the Cluster could torture him for secret information. Or, they could use him as a hostage, to force you _not_ to fight tomorrow. And on top of everything else, he's gone AWOL in our time of greatest need! He's deserted his country, he's deserted his planet, and he's deserted _you_."

"But … but … he didn't mean to … " Jenny found herself having a harder time defending Drew against _those_ charges. Because she had to admit, she sort of felt the same way …

Then her train of thought was interrupted by a commotion at the hangar entrance. Doctors Wakeman, Mogg, and Plink had finally reached the flight deck of Hangar Two, huffing and puffing as they ran to catch up with the general, still not up to speed with the frenetic pace of events. Mogg and Plink collapsed against a portable electric generator, trying to catch their breath after their sprint down a quarter-mile-long hallway. But her mom was at her side in a flash; she always seemed to have enough energy to launch into yet another round of over-mothering.

"XJ-9! XJ-9, we monitored an explosion on deep space radar – are you all right? Did you sustain any damage?" Mrs. Wakeman paced around her daughter, inspecting her systems with a fretful eye. "Is there anything you need, dear? Maybe a new element for your internal heaters? Some fresh grease for your ball bearings? Do you need to change your oil filter?" Jenny slapped her forehead in agony; it never failed to amaze her how quickly her mother could embarrass her in public.

Then Dr. Plink burst forward, stammering as he wiped his glasses against his wrinkled coat. "_Glah_ … the nanodroid … _bwah_, where did that squishy little devil get to? You see … because we need the nanodroid for the …" – he finished cleaning his glasses, fumbled them back onto his face … and dropped to his knees, as he saw the shattered remains of a large cylinder scattered across the deck plating.

"Oh, my_ glavin_!!! My precious Slurry Projector! _Bwah,_ what did he do to you?" Moist, heaving sobs poured out of his lanky frame, and he lovingly wrapped his arms around a random chunk of broken pipe as if it were a cherished family member. "_Bwahhh,_ so long I worked on you, I did … with the building, and the welding, and the chrome-plating … _bwahhhh,_ don't worry, my poor little Pudding Cannon, Daddy's here to make it all better! Just hold on, while I … _ungh_ … get you off of this … _hunghh_ … cold floor … _ow_, I think I cut myself. Oh, the pain! Would somebody get me a band-aid, I have … _nnn-hey_ … chronic thin blood syndrome. _Oh boy_ … stood up too fast … now comes the fainting …"

"You don't have to worry about your stupid little cannon," huffed Jenny, ignoring Plink's efforts to find a nearby chair. "Drew's _gone_. He took off for Cluster Prime, and I could have stopped him – if it weren't for this stupid Z-Pack!"

Dr. Mogg was lightning-fast to jump to the defense of his invention. "Now see here, robot, we've already gone through this! You need the increased power. And you were given a thorough systems check by Nora and myself, and we both agreed that there's nothing wrong with the Z-Pack …"

"Nothing _wrong_ with it!?!" Jenny's frustration with the monstrosity bolted onto her back was nearing the breaking point. "_Everything_ is wrong with it! Ever since I got this hunk of junk hooked up to me this morning, I've been a walking disaster area! I bust through walls. I crush everything I touch. If I _had_ tried to shoot out the stealth ship's engines like the general said, I would have blown it into a million pieces! Look what I did to the giant hangar doors, and tell me there's nothing wrong!"

Mrs. Wakeman studied the Z-Pack and its thick black cabling with a bit more scrutiny. "Hmmm … given the circumstances, perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to open up the Z-Pack and take a look inside. It couldn't hurt to have another pair of eyes examine …

"Oh, no you don't, Nora," grinned Mogg, wagging his finger at her. "The Z-Pack is _my_ idea, _my_ property, _my_ invention. It is only _on loan_ to you and your robot until after the Cluster invasion has been repelled. If you examine it, I'll have grounds to sue you for theft of intellectual property. There are security seals located just underneath the housing – so I'll _know_ if you try to open it up. I'll be the judge of the Z-Pack's health, thank you very much."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handheld scanner, the same one he'd used on Jenny back in the briefing tent, and waved it over the surface of the Z-Pack. A series of _plings_ and _bloops_ and _gleeps_ sang out, and after a few seconds, a row of lights on top of the scanner lit up with a bright green. "There, you see? No power spikes. Everything's in perfect working order."

"That's all fine and good, Phinneas, but how do you explain XJ-9's bursts of uncontrolled strength …"

"Nora … General Brohammer … let me be perfectly frank." Dr. Mogg rocked back and forth on his heels, unable to fully remove the smugness from his voice. "I can confidently say, despite the robot's misgivings, that there is absolutely _nothing_ wrong with the Z-Pack. So logically, there can only be one possible source for the problem … the XJ-9 robot _itself_."

Jenny and Mrs. Wakeman gasped in unison at the brashness of the accusation, but Mogg continued. "Nora, can you honestly say that your automaton hasn't had control problems in the past? I seem to recall hearing stories about demolished high schools and wild rampages of destruction through downtown Tremorton. Damaged factories, demolished office buildings, crushed automobiles – why, the first time I met her, she was knocking down walls! All of those control problems, and all with her old, outdated power pack. And now she's got a new, state-of-the-art Zero Point Energy generator connected to the same old, flawed control circuitry? I guess I shouldn't be surprised that she's having problems."

Furious sparks of electricity leapt from Jenny's cheeks. "What the … you little creep! What are you trying to say? Are you saying all these problems are _my_ fault?!?"

"I'm saying …" – Mogg replied to Mrs. Wakeman, instead of Jenny – "… that the Z-Pack is brand-new, cutting-edge technology. The XJ-9, on the other hand, is over _five years old_. My laptop computer is newer than that! Face facts, Nora. Putting a Z-Pack on your robot is like mounting a jet engine on a covered wagon. The XJ-9 … is _obsolete_."

* * *

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"

Drew finally stopped screaming, pried his eyes open, and ran quick self-diagnostic to make sure that he was actually still alive. _Pant – gasp – that was too close._ The missiles had barely missed them. It probably would've been a smart idea to run a damage check on the Stealth Wasp at once – except, he still couldn't pry his fingers loose from the control sticks. He settled for a quick survey of the bewildering instruments flickering in front him. While he didn't fully understand what they meant, he knew whether they were showing the right values or not. And amazingly, they were all smack dab on target. The Wasp was actually gliding through the bizarre realm of hyperspace …

"_Whooooaaaa!_ Check it out!" shouted the Silver Shell, as he lunged back and forth to point at the whirling clouds of inter-dimensional plasma just outside the canopy. "Cool beans! We _did it!_ Cluster Prime, here we come! Oh, here we come to save the daaaayyyy …"

The sound of the unwanted passenger's voice made Drew's teeth grind together like tectonic plates. "This is _not_ happening," he mumbled, wondering why the universe hated him so much.

"Well, we've got a long trip in front of us, _partner_, and I know the perfect way to pass the time!" A small door opened in the mighty robot's shoulder to deploy a tiny horn, which played a single note. "_Ohhhh_ … one million bottles of beer on the wall, one million bottles of beer …"

Drew snapped around in his seat and stretched his neck, bringing his enraged face six inches from the Shell's. "Stop it! Stop it _right now_! And stop calling me 'partner', because you're _not_ my partner! No, you're … oh, what's the word I'm looking for … _excess baggage_! What in blue blazes are you _doing_ here, Sheldon? I oughta eject your butt right into the nearest black hole!" Drew waved a silver-green fist underneath the Shell's chin …

And was knocked back into his seat as the Shell's chest swung open to reveal a hyper-excited Sheldon Lee, working the levers of an incredibly complex control panel. "Relax, Drew!" he chuckled, speaking once again in his nasally voice. "I figured out what you were up to. When you asked me to make a Cluster anti-virus program, and you said that it wasn't for Jenny … well, the only other robot it could possibly be for was Allison. But I couldn't figure out how you were going to get the program to her! Uh … that is, until I snuck a peek at your letter in the cafeteria at lunch. The one that said you were going to steal a Stealth Wasp and fly it to Cluster Prime …"

"You _read_ my …" – Drew's eye twitched as he struggled to keep his temper in check. "And you decided to hitch a ride with me, _because …_???"

Sheldon twiddled his fingers, and his eyes darted about nervously. "Umm … well, it's just like you said, Allison helped to save us, so I thought it would be nice to … y'know, help her out, so I thought I'd come along with you and see if I could … y'know … lend a hand …"

The frown on Drew's face reeked of skepticism. "Just coming along to lend a hand? Out of the goodness of your own heart, huh? And I'm supposed to _believe_ that?"

"Oh, all right!" huffed Sheldon. "When we were on Cluster Prime, Brad and I got sent to this secret lab underneath Queen Vexus' palace. This crazy robot named Stanley had all kinds of cool stuff in there, and he was working on a way to turn humans into robots using _nanobots_! So I figured, Allison is trapped in Vexus' palace – that's where you're going, right? – so I'd come along with you, swing by Stanley's old lab, and collect a few batches of his nanobot experiments!" A smile crept onto his face, as Sheldon lapsed into a happy daydream. "Then I can turn myself into a robot boy for _real_, and _finally_ win the heart of my lady fair! I can see it now … first I take Jenny to the junior prom, then we go steady …"

Drew flung his arms wildly in complete disbelief. "You insane, screwball whack-job bucket of fruit loops! This makes it official, Sheldon … you are three fries short of a Happy Meal! For crying out loud … so you wanna go to Vexus' palace to pick up some nanobots? You make is sound like we're going to the grocery store to pick up a quart of milk. Do you not realize just how _dangerous_ this is? There's a pretty good chance we might not be coming back! And you're risking your life to live out some deranged stalker geek fantasy – about turning yourself into a gooey blob of silver nano-snot, like me?" He slapped his hand over his face; just when he thought that Sheldon couldn't get any crazier …

"Are you kidding?! I think it would be kinda cool to be a shape-shifter …"

"Cool? _Cool?!?_ You're talking about letting a bunch of nano-machines break your body down into atoms and blend them up into a metallic milkshake." Drew rolled his eyes in disgust. "You have _lost_ it, dude. Oh yeah, the little hamster is asleep in the wheel."

"Oh, I see …" sneered Sheldon, suddenly understanding the reason for Drew's outburst. "You just want to make sure that _you're_ the only nanodroid in school."

"Oh, you got me, Sheldon," Drew smirked sarcastically. "That's it exactly. Because being a walking blob of sludge has made me _oh, so_ popular with all the kids at school."

"Maybe you're just afraid that _I'll_ be a better robot than you are," taunted Sheldon. "Maybe you're afraid that I'll figure out how to make the nanobots work the way they're _supposed_ to!"

Drew growled at the implied insult. "And you think doing this will make Jenny fall hopelessly in _love_ with you. Man, you're nuts."

"Oh, yeah?" Sheldon snarled back. "You'll see! After I turn myself into a robot boy, Jenny will finally have someone just like her to love and …"

"She _doesn't love you_, Sheldon!" Drew shouted at the top of his voice, finally losing his patience with Sheldon's insane obsession. "When will you get it through your thick, stupid, pimply skull that Jenny _does not love you?_"

An abrupt silence fell over the cockpit, with nothing but the faint chirping of the ship's electronics to be heard over the dull background whine of the engines.

Drew and Sheldon simply glared furiously at each other for a long time, as the stormy haze of hyperspace screamed all around them, bathing their faces in a flickering reddish-purple light.

And then, to his surprise, Drew saw a tear trickle from the corner of Sheldon's eye.

"I know," he squeaked, in a tiny voice.

Drew squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, unsure of what to do or say next. But Sheldon took a deep, heaving breath, and continued on. "I know Jenny doesn't love me. Oh, she likes me, I guess. She calls me a 'good friend'. It always makes me happy whenever she says that. And at the same time, it feels like she's blasting a hole in my heart with one of her laser beams."

Sheldon slumped against the Shell's control panel, drooping his head into his chest. "Everyone always makes fun of me whenever I say that I love Jenny. Maybe because I'm a geek, or because I still collect Zokemon cards – I don't know. But Jenny was the first girl that was ever nice to me. She talks with me, and lets me spend time with her – well, sometimes – and I think she _really is_ the prettiest girl in school. She's the first girl I ever held hands with. The fact that she's a robot only makes her _more_ amazing to me." He raised his face, with weary eyes peering through a mop of greasy black hair, and sighed deeply. "I know Jenny doesn't love me, but I _really do_ love her. And I keep telling myself that someday, if I keep trying hard enough, I'll find a way to make myself good enough for her to love."

For the first time that he could ever remember, Drew actually felt a twinge of sorrow for the pitiful little fellow. "_Geez_ … Sheldon … are you sure you're not just setting yourself up to get hurt? Think about it – what if you actually do find a way to turn yourself into a nanodroid? You can't guarantee that Jenny will fall in love with you just because you happen to be a robot."

"It's worth the risk, if it gives me a chance to win Jenny's heart."

"You're talking about throwing your _life_ away, Sheldon. No girl is worth that kind of risk."

Now a faint smirk began to tug at the corner of Sheldon's mouth. "Well that's a funny thing to say, coming from a guy who just stole an alien spaceship from the military so he could go rescue his _girlfriend_."

Drew's eyes shrunk to the size of pencil points; he hadn't expected Sheldon to put him on the defensive like that. And with a embarrassingly valid point, too. "Th-that's totally different! I … I mean … I have to try and help Ally … we owe it to her, and there's nobody else who can get to her …"

Sheldon folded his arms with a touch of smugness; he knew he was scoring points here. "Give it a rest, Drew. Everyone in the class saw you and that robot girl acting all _gooshy_ _mooshy_ back on Cluster Prime. And now, you're risking your life to save her. Why? Because you're in _love_ with her."

"I … that is … I mean …" And of course he _was_, and it was as obvious as the fact that water is wet, and there was no point in trying deny it. But he'd be _danged_ if the first person he openly declared that to was going to be _Sheldon_. "Look, _duh_, I care about Ally, alright? And, _yes_, I guess I'm risking my life to try and save her! Arguably, not the smartest thing I've ever done … but I _have_ to do this."

"A-ha!" shouted Sheldon, smiling like a lawyer who'd just gotten a witness to confess. "See? You admit it. And you were making fun of me, when _you_, of all people, should know how I feel more than anyone else! Because you're doing _exactly_ same thing that I am."

"I am _not!_" Drew protested, revolted at the idea of being lumped into any kind of group with Sheldon. "It's a totally different situation, okay?"

"_Riiiiight_," smiled Sheldon, "name one way that what you're doing is any different from what I'm doing."

Drew's only reply was melancholy silence, then he swallowed hard, and slumped back into the Wasp's forward seat. Sheldon assumed that he was conceding the argument to him. Then Drew stared out the front of the canopy, seemingly mesmerized by the swirls and eddies of crackling energy …

"Right now Ally is a prisoner, trapped in Vexus' palace," he said, in a weak, shaking voice. "She's being tortured. She's lost her family. She might have been reprogrammed. I … I'm not even sure how much of her own mind will be left, if I can actually find her. And all of that is happening to her because of _me_. She risked her life for me, and then, we she needed me the most …" – he had to pause, to hold himself together – "… I let her down. And now she's suffering, instead of living a normal, happy life. Meeting me was the worst thing that ever happened to her."

He closed his eyes, wincing as his nightmare replayed itself again. "You want to know the difference between you and me, Sheldon? The difference is, you didn't almost _kill_ the girl you're in love with."

Light and shadow danced silently inside the Stealth Wasp's cockpit, as it shrieked through hyperspace at unimaginable speed, carrying a pair of sullen teenagers to their unknown fates.

* * *

Evening at the Wakeman house could only mean one thing: a wall-shaking, window-rattling, mother-daughter shouting match. And tonight, the tension in Jenny's bedroom was even thicker than usual. They had argued all the way home in the car, continued arguing as they came in the front door, and now they were having a bitter tug-of-war, fighting over a large blue-and-white wrench, of all things. The doctor didn't have a hope of besting Jenny's super-strength, but she did have a weapon that the robot girl was defenseless against – the stern motherly glare. Jenny finally relented, and Mrs. Wakeman snatched the wrench from her hand.

"Stop being so ridiculous, XJ-9!" she shouted, wagging a finger at her pouting daughter. "It's only going to be attached for another day. You are _not_ removing it, and that is the final word on the subject! Now be a good robot, and run your systems check while I get things ready in the basement."

The instant Mrs. Wakeman closed the bedroom door behind her, Jenny smiled a devious smile – and simply deployed another blue-and-white wrench from a compartment in her wrist. "Don't care what Mom says," she grumbled, as she twisted her arms around to reach behind her back. "I'm tired of carrying this stupid hunk of junk around!" After a few _very_ frustrating moments of trying to slide the wrench around the correct bolt, she started to unscrew the first fastener … and then stopped herself. "But I need it if I'm gonna save the Earth tomorrow," she sighed wearily. Her fists shook in a fit of melodramatic angst – then she took the wrench, and hurled it at her bedroom wall as hard as she could.

The wrench pulverized a hole in the wall, right through the middle of her L'il Rover poster, and it kept on going – heading for low Earth orbit. It only missed the window by three feet – the window where Tuck was clinging desperately to the sill, ducking his head beneath his hands. "Uh, if this is a bad time," he grimaced, "we could always come back later."

"Tuck! _Omigosh_ … I'm sorry!" Jenny rushed over to her bedroom window and scooped Tuck up in her arms, just in time to make way for Brad to come spelunking in after him. Jenny reminded herself to be more careful in the future; the windows in the Wakeman house got more use than the doors did.

"Hey there, Jen," he grinned, setting a plastic grocery bag down on the floor. "Heard you guys pull into the driveway, so we thought we'd pop over to visit! After all, there's only one day to go until the big Cluster invasion, and we figured you might want to spend some time tonight going over your space combat techniques. So we're here to help!" He figured that Jenny could use a visit from a friend after a boring day listening to lectures at the Starship Camp.

"That's right!" smiled Tuck, as he dropped to the floor and rummaged around in the bag. He held up a video disc in each hand. "We've got the Star Battles Trilogy, and Attack of the Mars Mutants IV – the director's cut! Y'know, the critics may have panned it, but I personally consider Attack of the Mars Mutants IV to be one of the classics of modern cinema …"

"_Please_, you still can't watch the whole thing without hiding behind the sofa," sneered Brad. "So anyway, we got soda, potato chips, and can of high performance engine treatment … all the essentials. Which movie do you want to watch first?"

Jenny shook her head, and rubbed her fingers through Tuck's hair. "Aw, guys … it's really nice of you to come over like this, but I can't watch movies tonight." She rolled her eyes and _harrumphed_. "I'm going to be working in the basement lab with my mom all night. That oughta be _loads_ of fun."

Brad looked a bit disappointed, but he eased his hands into his pockets with a smile. "Not a problem. We'll just reschedule our little training session into a celebration party for tomorrow night! For when after you fill outer space with dismantled Cluster robot tooshie!" He punched the air enthusiastically, imagining the spectacular Cluster carnage that Jenny was going to wreak tomorrow.

"Awww, but I wanted to watch movies!" whined Tuck. "I was gonna stay up all night – after all, I might get turned into a zombie slave tomorrow, and who knows if the Cluster will let us watch movies, or stay up late? Um … not that I think that's going to happen, of course. _Heh-heh-heh …_"

Jenny gave Tuck a nasty glare. "Gee, thanks for the vote of _confidence_."

Brad rolled his eyes; _little brother sticks foot in mouth, yet again_. "Tell you what, Tuck … maybe I'll give Drew a call and see if he wants to watch something with us over at our place. Unless he's busy down in the basement with your mom, Jen. Is he working with you guys tonight, too?"

He was completely unprepared for her reaction to that innocent question. Jenny ground her hands into angry fists, looked around her bedroom for something else to throw, then grabbed an empty oil can and flung it through the wall, making a matching hole next to the first one. "Drew's _gone_, Brad … maybe gone forever. The big jerk actually stole a spaceship right out from everyone's noses, and he's on is way to Cluster Prime as we speak!"

Brad's eyes ballooned to the size of basketballs. "_Whoa!_ Seriously? He actually boosted a spaceship!?! Suh-_weeet_! Go Drew!" The angry look he got from Jenny told him that she did _not_ share his opinion. "Uhh … not sweet? Oh, right. He was supposed to help you fight the Cluster."

"Forget about that – the big dummy thinks he's going to save Allison, but he's just going to get himself killed!" she yelled, her cheeks crackling with tiny bolts of electricity. "And the Silver Shell is with him, for some reason! Just when I finally start making some robot friends – now I'm losing them all! And I should have _stopped_ him … that is, I _could_ have, if it wasn't for this _stupid_ Z-Pack dingus."

"Sounds like Drew finally lost his nano-marbles …" As cool as stealing a spaceship sounded to Brad, the thought of Drew and the Shell going up against all those thousands of ships and robots all by themselves … _ugh, they're toast_. Then something Jenny had just said stuck him … "What do you mean, you could have stopped him? What happened with your Z-Pack? More power surge issues?"

"_Major_ power surge issues," moped Jenny, as she plopped herself on the edge of her bed. She stared dejectedly into her full-length mirror, so she could she the full hideousness of the ugly metal canister with its ugly black cables plugging into her like some alien parasite. "I talked to Dr. Mogg like you suggested, Brad, but he got all _snippy_ whenever me or my mom suggested that there might be something wrong with his invention. I kind of have a feeling that he's hiding something … but he's got all this equipment and this scanner that _proves_ the Z-Pack is working perfectly." She closed her eyes, and her pigtails drooped woefully to the sides of her face. "That means the problem is _me_. I can't handle all this new power. Mogg said that my systems were _obsolete_."

"_What?!?_" Brad had a sudden urge to plant a fist in the old man's face. "Where does that old coot get off calling you obsolete? I bet you told him off good, didn't you?"

"I'm not sure he isn't _right_," she answered in a glum voice. "I can barely control myself with this new upgraded power pack. I practically wrecked the school today. And I couldn't even stop Drew from running away, when that should have been a piece of cake. How am I supposed to stop a Cluster fleet if I can't even stop one little spaceship?"

And before the boys could think of something to cheer her up, they heard Mrs. Wakeman's voice bellowing from downstairs. "XJ-_Niyun_! Those power couplers are _not_ going to re-adjust themselves! You had _better_ not be watching music videos on your monitors again, young lady!"

"Be right down!" Jenny hollered back, as she picked herself up off the bed. "I gotta go, guys. Maybe you should go home and watch those movies like Tuck said. The way _I'm_ messing up, we're all going to be Cluster slaves by this time tomorrow." She dragged herself over to her bedroom door, and pushed it open … blowing out a twenty-foot section of wall in the process. Then with an agonized sigh, Jenny clomped her feet down the stairs, trudging through chunks of wall plaster.

Brad helped Tuck out the window and climbed back down to the ground, still somewhat amazed by everything he'd just heard. It was stunning enough that he might never see Drew again. But he was even more upset to see Jenny so down on herself. It was nothing new to see her moping, or sad, or depressed; but in the past, she was always upset over stuff like her mom not letting her paint a tattoo on her arm, or Brit and Tiff tricking her into blowing up the football scoreboard. And of course, Jenny was always in need of moral support whenever a cute new guy caught her eye. Brad smiled to himself; sometimes he wondered if _he_ knew more about Jenny than Dr. Wakeman did. But how could she think that she was obsolete? For crying out loud, she'd saved the Earth _how_ many times, again? And now, just because of something that one of her mom's creepo science buddies said …

He tapped his chin in thought. "What did she say? _I kind of have a feeling that he's hiding something_." The gears in his head began to turn.

"Well, looks like it's just the two of us," sighed Tuck, munching on a mouthful of potato chips. "You wanna go get a box of Jujubes before we start the movies?"

"I think I have a better idea than just watching movies," grinned Brad, with a smile that set off alarms in Tuck's head. He was getting that feeling again … the feeling that his big brother was cooking up some hair-brained idea that was going to get them both into trouble. The brothers went back to their house, but instead of plopping down in the living room for an evening of sci-fi, Brad explained his idea, then dragged his reluctant little brother with him into the garage. As the last rays of sunlight dipped below the horizon, Brad coasted onto the driveway on his ten-speed, with Tuck clamping his arms around his big brother's waist. The streetlights came on, and the Carbunkle brothers rolled into action.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Ten / Nineteen Hours to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	10. Return to the Iron Planet

A/N – Well, I've seen the five new Teen-Bot episodes, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. There wasn't really any major idea or fact presented that torpedos the rest of my plot. And returning characters, like Mogg and Smytus, are more or less as I expected they would be (I might have to make Smytus less of a buffoon, though). There were a few episodes that touched on ideas I'm using in this story, like Jenny worrying she's become obsolete. But I won't worry about it. And on the plus side, I think the Season Two episodes are funnier than your average Season One episode. Well, as you noticed, Chapter Nine was a bit of a breather, albeit an angst-filled one. Now we start to heat things up again …

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Ten – Return to the Iron Planet

* * *

The sun had set on the Starship Camp many hours ago, but the onsite science team was still hard at work, coming up with last-minute ideas to bolster the Earth's defenses. One batch of scientists was doing last-minute work on the captured Cluster spaceships, to get them ready for combat. Another team was still trying to salvage useful intelligence from the starship's main computer core. And then there was the secondary tent towards the back of the camp, where pieces of fantastic, broken machinery were scattered about the floor like an indoor scrap yard. Dr. Plink was sifting through the fragmented remains of his nano-slurry cannon, muttering and babbling to himself as he re-arranged the parts into different, bizarre configurations. And he was showing off a new set of hastily-prepared blueprints to his unimpressed colleague, Dr. Mogg.

"_Mmm-hey-hey_, it's so obvious, Phinneas!" blurted Plink, his glasses nearly launching off of his bulb-shaped face. "If we just add a Bunsen De-flange-ulator here, and a subatomic discombobulator here … _glahh_ … wrap it up good 'n' tight with some duct tape, mount it on top of a nuclear reactor … we've got ourselves one honey of an anti-proton cannon! POW! Mwa-haww! I call it … the Plinkinator 5000!"

"Mortimer," groaned Mogg, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, "if you fire that thing from the ground, the anti-protons will react with the oxygen molecules in the air. You'll incinerate the entire atmosphere and destroy all life on Earth."

Plink frowned at him and shook his head. "Oh, it's _so easy_ to criticize, isn't it, Phinneas?"

The scientists continued to argue back and forth over the merits of Plink's latest project, when a young corporal poked his head inside the tent flap to interrupt them. "Uh, Doctors? Sorry, but I have someone here to see you …"

"One side, please! Excuse me, sir. Make way, make way. Hot stuff coming through!"

Brad and Tuck burst into the tent like a hurricane, each carrying a stack of pizza boxes and wearing a yellow ball cap that identified them as delivery boys for Torterelli's Pizza. The scientists glanced at each other, dumbfounded, as Brad marched up to their work table and set his pizzas down on a stack of blueprints. Tuck set his down as well, and pulled a receipt out of his pocket. "Okay, that's twelve large pizzas, delivered in under thirty minutes, your total is ninety-four dollars and seventy cents," he said, holding out his little hand. "Unless you have our two-for-one coupon!"

"Wait a minute," said Mogg, suspiciously, "what is all this about? We didn't call for any –"

"I must say, it is _very_ generous of you to order these fine pizza pies for our brave boys in uniform," grinned Brad, as he shook Dr. Mogg's hand enthusiastically. The con was _on_. "Yessir, not many _famous, important_ scientists like you would take the time to worry about the ordinary guys! The tireless lads working outside the spotlight, doing their part to defend our planet …"

"There's been some sort of mistake," growled an increasingly irritated Mogg. "Nobody here called for –"

"Oh? Did we get the order wrong?" asked Brad, innocently. He opened a box, and let the succulent aroma of hot pizza waft out to quickly fill the tent. "Let's see what we have here … warm, gooey mozzarella cheese, with rich tomato sauce and fresh roasted pepperonis … mmm, would you just look at all those plump, succulent mushrooms …" – he used the lid of the box to fan the aroma in Plink and Mogg's direction – "… and those big fat slices of spicy, juicy sausage … mmmmmmmm …"

A crowd of hungry soldiers had gathered at the door of the tent, and were staring in at the pizzas like ravenous wolves. Neither of the scientists had eaten since lunch; a lake of Pavlovian drool was forming in Plink's mouth as the steam from the pizzas fogged up his glasses. "Oh my sweet glavin, that smells delectable … _mwa-haw_ … oooh, with the garlic bread, and the little tiny peppers that get so hot in your mouth but taste so good, they do … pay the boy, Phinneas, and pass me a napkin! _Bwa-haw!_"

"We accept all major credit cards," smiled Tuck, thrusting out his chest. "And if you want to talk financing, I can give you some very competitive interest rates …"

"Oh, _all right_," groaned Mogg, surrendering to the will of the hungry mob. "I _suppose_ we can afford to take a very short break. Dispense with your idiotic tomato and cheese confections, and then get out of here! And be quick about it!"

"We aim to please, sir," said Brad, snapping a brisk salute. There were a pair of long tables in the tent, covered with sensitive diagrams and blueprints, that would be perfect for the impromptu buffet. Brad cleared off all the scientific papers and set them on the floor – then he opened all the pizza boxes, set out the napkins and soda cups, and invited the enthusiastic soldiers into the tent.

"Oh, and don't forget your complimentary soda pop, sir!" Brad unslung a cooler bag that he was wearing like a backpack; he unzipped the bag and set out the free soda – then he winked at Tuck.

That was the signal for Tuck to get Dr. Mogg's attention. "Um, yes, so as I said, that'll be ninety-four dollars and seventy cents. Are you a member of our pizza lover's club? If you sign up tonight, then in only five more deliveries you get a free side order of cheese sticks …"

"I'm _not interested_," huffed Mogg, still not sure just who had set him up for the classic pizza delivery prank. He figured that it must have been one of his grad students. Or it might even have been Plink himself – he was certainly absent-minded enough to have phoned out for pizza and forgotten about it. The grizzled old scientist grumbled and dug into his lab coat pocket for his wallet …

And didn't notice that Brad had quietly folded up the scientific papers – the ones he'd just cleared off the tables – and stuffed them inside his backpack cooler bag. Brad took a quick look at one of the blueprints, and verified that it read _Z-Pack Design Schematics_ at the top. _Bingo_, he grinned to himself. Then he noticed a large, handheld scanning device sitting at the end of the table, with a label that identified it as a _Z-Scanner_. He figured he'd better swipe that too, for good measure – so into the backpack it went. He zipped the pack closed, and swung it onto his back.

"Well, our work here is done," he said – barely heard over the feeding frenzy that had erupted around the pizza tables. He tipped his cap good night to the glowering Dr. Mogg, and the frenetic Dr. Plink, who was hopping around, yelling that he'd just burned the roof of his mouth. Then he grabbed his little brother by the hand, and drug him outside.

Tuck frowned as he thumbed through a wad of money, and shook at fist back at the tent. "You call that a tip?!? Five percent?!? Have you no respect for the working man?!?"

"Cool it, Tuck," hissed Brad, "it's time to make a clean getaway!" He leapt onto his bicycle and pulled Tuck up behind him. Tuck just had time to clutch onto his big brother's vest before the bike lunged forward and accelerated to top speed. The Carbunkle brothers rolled past quiet rows of darkened tents, and columns of jeeps and tanks, and in moments, they had wheeled past the park entrance, waving good-bye to the friendly soldiers guarding at the gate.

Once they were a safe couple of blocks away from the park, Brad unleashed a satisfied laugh into the cool night air. "We did it, Tuck! Of course, there was never any doubt thanks to my _ingenious plan_. Brad Carbunkle, Master Spy. You know, I think I have a knack for this. I'm gonna talk to the guidance counselor tomorrow morning."

"You do that, double-oh-dumbbell," sneered Tuck, rolling his eyes in aggravation. He took off his bright yellow ball cap, and examined the name stitched onto the front. "It sure was nice of Mr. Torterelli to loan us these ball caps. Let's just get back to his store and pay for the pizzas, and then we can go home and begin our all-night movie marathon!"

"Not quite, Tucker. Our mission isn't over yet." Brad patted the cooler bag strapped to his back. "The whole idea was to sneek a peek at the blueprints for this mysterious Z-Pack gizmo that's got Jenny all bent out of shape. That little Mogg twerp thinks that Jenny is obsolete, but I don't buy that load of _hooey_ for a second. Now, with my _razor-sharp_ intellect and keen deductive abilities, I'm going to study these blueprints, and find the flaw in its design!"

"Uh … telegram from Planet Reality, Brad. You got a C-minus in Physics on your last report card." Tuck smiled a nasty little smile. "You couldn't shave the peach fuzz off your own chin with that _razor_-sharp intellect of yours.

"Pipe down, runt," growled Brad, "or I'll shave a few years off your expected lifespan." He pumped the pedals faster and faster, speeding the bike down a quiet side road. Then he coasted around a turn, and disappeared over a hill that led back home to the suburbs.

* * *

Drew studied the power levels for the curved-space generator, then took speed and position readings from the navigation scope, just as he'd done every ten minutes for the past eight hours. It was completely unnecessary, as the autopilot was doing all the flying through hyperspace, but it helped him become more familiar with the Stealth Wasp's complex cockpit – and it helped him settle his nerves, if only a little. He grew the data screen from his arm again and went over another checklist. If his numbers were correct – and one benefit of becoming an android was that he'd gotten _much_ better at math – then they mere moments from their destination.

"We should be there in five minutes or so," he called over his shoulder. "Give me some good news about the cloaking device. And would you _please_ do it without calling me 'Mister Sulu'."

Sheldon was leaning back in the Silver Shell's command chair, with his feet dangling out of the chest's open hatch, typing up a storm on his keyboards. He'd run cables from the Shell's computers to the network jacks on the back-seat control panels, and had spent a good portion of the flight learning all about the Cluster craft's innermost workings. "Roger dodger! I got this cloaking device _all_ figured out. It really soaks up a lot of power … and I mean, like, a _lot_ of power; that's why you can't use it at the same time as the hyperdrive. It'll work, but we have to wait until we leave hyperspace before we can turn it on."

"Man, that thing better work as advertised," sighed Drew. "I was pretty much counting on being invisible for this. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid – I have no delusions about heroically fighting my way past any Cluster battleships. _Believe me._"

Sheldon reached over to a food dispenser mounted next to the Shell's main hydraulic cylinder, and pressed the button labeled _Twinkie_. A pair of slender robotic arms popped out of the dispenser, quickly removed the plastic wrapper, and popped the yellow snack cake into his waiting mouth. "So, uh … what exactly are we supposed to do once we get there?" he asked, talking while he chewed.

"Well, once we're invisible, we just glide down to the Cluster capital, nice and quiet, and nobody notices us. _Hopefully._ We land a nice safe distance outside the city, away from the military base, and then make our way in towards the queen's palace. Of course, I expected to be _on my own_ for that." Drew twisted around in his seat, and gave Sheldon a frustrated look. "Look … I wanted to do this alone was because it is so _crazy_ dangerous. That way, if I screw up, I'm the only one who gets hurt. But I also figured – y'know – hey, I'm a shape shifter. If I can get into the city, then I'll be able to blend in with all the other robots. _Maybe_ you ought to stay with the ship, Sheldon."

"_Nothing doing,_ Drew! Why do you think I brought the Silver Shell along?" He smiled proudly and patted the Shell's row of glowing monitors. "As long as I stay in here, nobody will ever suspect I'm not really a robot! Besides, I can help you. Don't forget, I can hack into the Cluster computer networks. And I've actually _been_ inside of Vexus' palace before – _you_ haven't! You know, now that I think about it, it's a good thing for you that I came along!" With a satisfied smile, he punched a button labeled _Cherry Soda_, and a robotic straw twisted out of the dispenser to squirt bubbly red liquid down his throat.

"Yeah, lucky me," groaned Drew. Just because he was starting to understand Sheldon's Jenny-obsession _didn't_ mean that he wanted to be his buddy all of the sudden. Well, that was beside the point … it looked like this was going to be a two-man rescue mission now. He cradled his forehead and slowly shook his head – until the gurgling sound of an empty soda tank rattled him back to attention. "Uh … do you think it's such a good idea to drink so much of that stuff right before … we … umm …?"

"Not to worry, my good man," grinned Sheldon, "this baby is fully equipped for _any_ situation." He pulled a lever, and a loud swirling _flush_ came from somewhere within the Silver Shell's chest cavity.

A silver-green shudder warbled up Drew's back. "Oh, geeez … _dude_ … I did _not_ need to know that. Man, it's a good thing I can erase my short-term memory banks …"

Then a soft beeping noise chirped from the front control panel. Drew whirled back into the front seat and checked the navigation scope, trying to decipher the still-mysterious symbols. "_Hoo boy_, I think this might be it. If I'm reading this thing the right way, then Cluster Prime should be just about …"

The roiling clouds of crimson and violet disappeared in a pulse of blinding white light, as if the ship had flown into an explosion of ball lightning. Then a spiraling vortex of energy spawned directly in front of the Stealth Wasp, opening a portal to a realm as deep and dark as a bottomless pit. Drew clenched his teeth and clamped tightly onto the control sticks as a wave of distortion ran through the ship, and he had the faintest sensation of plunging over the edge of a cliff … then everything was calm, and the sky went perfectly dark. Sheldon rubbed his eyes and looked out of the bubble canopy, blinking hard as a swarm of dots swam madly in front of him like drunken fireflies. Then the fireflies settled down, and he realized that he was simply looking out at the stars – they were finally back in normal, ordinary space.

And hanging right in front of them, filling up nearly half of the sky, was an angry rust-red metallic globe, circled by a jagged orange ring … and hundreds of giant warships.

Drew gulped hard, grew an extra set of arms, and frantically toggled switches as the Wasp's control panel lit up in a shrill symphony of alarms. "Holy Smokin'-eyed Moses, we nearly ran right into the dang thing! Shutting the hyperdrive engines down now. Oh, man, there's ships _everywhere_. Oh Jeez, c'mon Sheldon, c'mon c'mon c'mon, there's like more radars and sensor beams out there than I can even _count_, c'mon c'mon c'mon, they can see us, they can _see_ us …"

Sheldon was mashing buttons and twisting dials even faster than Drew was. "All right, don't rush me, you're making me nervous! Let's see … reroute the space-curve matrix through the field generator coils and the quantum flux capacitor and … _presto!_" He tossed a pair of large black-and-yellow levers, and there was an audible whine as the ship's power briefly dipped, then bounced back to normal. A hint of distortion rippled across the stars, but other than that, nothing really seemed to be any different …

Drew was afraid to make a sound as they gently coasted along. "Is it on?" he asked in a whisper.

"The little light above the levers came on," Sheldon whispered back … then he felt his heart leap into his dry, clammy throat. "D-D-Drew … look out your left window …"

A dozen fast-attack Hornet interceptors were swooping up at the Stealth Wasp in perfect formation, their stubby wing-tips loaded with a full compliment of missiles. The sleek interceptors were covered with sharp-edged fins that resembled barbs and stingers, and their noses were tipped with long, pointed blaster cannons that looked capable of delivering a very _lethal_ sting. Drew sat frozen in fear as he watched the Cluster formation glide towards him with stunning grace and speed. It was obvious that they were _not_ going to break off. And he didn't think a Stealth Wasp could outrun twelve interceptors. And it would take almost a minute to charge up the hyperdrive engines again. _Well, this certainly was a pretty short rescue mission …_

Then the Hornets flashed past them, arrogantly streaking right across their flight path without the slightest concern for the danger they were creating. It was as if … Drew allowed a tiny smile to wiggle onto his face … _it was as if they didn't even know we were here_.

The boys watched the formation of Hornets recede into the starry background, and it was a few moments before either of them released the breath they were holding. "They didn't see us," Drew whispered. "The crazy thing actually works. Nice job, Sheldon."

"Thanks," he beamed back … then he looked right past Drew, at an amazing sight a few dozen miles off to their port side. "Oh, boy … _ulp_ … would you get a load of _that_."

Hanging in an assembly area just above the planetary ring was a great swarm of Cluster warships, busily preparing themselves for the upcoming invasion of Earth. Each jaw-droppingly-huge mother ship looked like a giant beetle from some black-and-white horror movie, and was almost as large as the mile-long monster sitting back at the park outside of Tremorton. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of warships were being tended by shuttlecrafts that buzzed back and forth between the fleet and the supply depots that dotted the artificial ring. They were stocking the giant ships' supply holds with oil, fuel, and more drone troops and weaponry than Drew imagined could exist. He let his optical sensors analyze the formation for a good fifteen seconds, and even _he_ couldn't come up with an accurate ship count, such was the activity swirling around the massive fleet.

"There's gotta be a couple thousand of them," gulped Sheldon, feeling both awed and a little afraid. _Jenny is supposed to go up against … all of that?!? All by herself?!?_

"At least," said Drew, "probably more." They watched the assembling war fleet in silence for a few minutes more, coasting through Cluster-patrolled space with their engines turned off. Then, with the ring and the fleet safely behind them, he turned to face the hulking rust-and-copper world that filled the sky in front of him. A map came up on the navigation screen, and he picked out a landing spot just outside the capital's industrial sector. As he cautiously brought the ship's engines back on-line, the Wasp's sensors showed that the skies above the capital were positively crawling with patrol-drones, Royal Police, and deadly Black Mantis robots. _And on top of everything else_, thought Drew, _I'm not sure that I can even land this thing._

"Y-y-you know, I'm b-beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea," said Drew.

"I-I-I was just th-thinking the same thing," stammered Sheldon.

* * *

All she had left to do was process another six hundred and fifty-one inventory updates. Just a small matter of tracking the serial numbers for three million, eight hundred and thirty-six thousand proton blasters, as they were distributed among twenty-two different drone divisions, that were scattered across five hundred and fifty-nine different warships. Compared to what Allison had been put through over the past few days, with all the preparations for the invasion of Earth, it was almost _easy._ But it still pushed her processors far past their safety limits. She grunted in agony as a workload meant for _three_ LSN units was funneled into her input port, and her processing nodes began to glow like searing hot coals. Then the last calculations were sent out into the ClusterNet, and she felt her mental pathways _finally_ quiet down. She collapsed from her efforts, sagging limply in her web of circuitry, feeling like there wasn't an ounce of power left in her depleted batteries.

"Gasp … pant … heave … so tired …" she moaned aloud, though nobody was there to her hear her. She glanced around at the glowing pathways and hovering orbs of her garish cyberspace surroundings, and sighed with resignation. Over the past four days, she'd managed to catch fleeting glimpses of the outside world from the data streams that roared through her mind. She still had her personality, her memories, and even a sliver of her senses; but her physical body hadn't budged so much as a millimeter. She couldn't access her motor control center at all; those circuits lay outside of the glowing energy sphere that encased her, and she couldn't begin to imagine how she'd ever break through _that_. She couldn't even pull her virtual hands free from the glowing wires and manacles – why did Vexus need to _cage_ her, too? Talk about overkill! She fully realized now that she was going to spend the rest of her life trapped in her mind-prison, working non-stop until her circuits broke down and turned to dust.

Suddenly, a dull glow manifested in front of her, quickly growing into a swirling cocoon of red polygons. Even in her current miserable state, Allison couldn't help but roll her eyes in annoyance at this latest unwelcome intrusion. Crackles of electricity leapt from the far reaches of the Great Network, merging together to transform the cocoon into a magnificent, regal form. With a final pulse of thought and energy, Queen Vexus took shape directly in front of the energy sphere, and gave the shackled robot girl a wicked, oil-curdling smile.

"Greetings, LSN-1482," purred the robot queen. "Been keeping yourself busy?"

"Oh, great," mumbled Allison, trying not to show her fear. "This is _just_ what I need. You'll forgive me if I don't curtsey, _'Your Majesty'._"

"Oh, now don't be like that, my dear," chuckled Vexus, shaking a finger at her. "Especially when I've come to you with such wonderful news!"

_Yeah, I'll bet._ "Your warranty expired, and you're being turned into a Clustard machine?"

"Ha, ha, ha, haaaa … charming to the last, I see. No, you've been such a good, hard-working little LSN unit, that I've decided to give you a little break, to relax your aching microchips." Vexus clasped her hands together, taunting Allison with mock sympathy. "We can't have you blowing a fuse, or overloading your circuits, now, can we?"

Allison gave the queen a nasty frown. "Gee, I didn't know you cared."

"Well, of course I care, child. I care about the well being of all my robot children."

"Yeah … or _maybe_ you just want to make sure my processors don't overheat and shut down, so you won't be able to keep _torturing_ me."

"_Mmmm_, now that you mention it, it is a bit _toasty_ in here, isn't it? At least it's a _dry_ heat." Vexus fanned her face with a twisted hand … then gave her prisoner an evil glare that sent shivers through her wiring. "Just remember the old saying, sweetheart. It's not the heat … it's the _duplicity_. All of this is happening to you because of your _treasonous_ acts against me, and all robotkind! And you will continue to suffer until you come to your senses, and confess to your crimes against the Cluster! Then, and only then, will you be able to rejoin your brothers and sisters, and become one with us once more."

Even though Allison knew it would mean being reprogrammed, perhaps into a completely different, even unrecognizable robot, she was sorely tempted to simply give up and do what Vexus said. Resisting the queen was pointless. And it would put an end to all of this brain-frying agony …

Then she gave her head a shake, and summoned up all of her remaining courage. "Give it a rest, Vexus. I don't have anything to confess, because I haven't done anything wrong! All I did was learn the _truth_ about you, and the way you run things. Jenny showed me what you're really like! If anyone needs to confess to crimes against the Cluster, it's _you!_"

Vexus heaved her tapered shoulders with a deep _sigh_; this girl's attitude was becoming as annoying as XJ-9's. "Jennifer has been tainted by living with humans. They've corrupted her programming …"

"_Humans_ have corrupted her programming? Wow, pretty neat trick for a bunch of _primitive animals_ that can't even talk," smirked Allison. "But the _truth_ is, humans aren't primitive at all, are they?" She grinned at her small victory; she'd trapped Vexus in one of her own lies …

And the queen knew it. Fire raged in her eyes. "The truth is _whatever I say it is!_"

"In other words, whatever _lies_ you tell us." Allison realized she was probably pushing her luck, but she didn't care anymore. "Every night, when all the robots in the Cluster back themselves up. Why do you have to _lie_ to all of us all the time if you're so great and wonderful, huh? Unless Jenny's right, and you're just an evil old robot hag with major control-freak issues."

Amazingly, Vexus did not rip the girl's pump out of her chest on the spot for that insult. "Jenny, much like you, will see things differently once we conquer the Earth," she hissed.

Allison _harrumphed_, and sneered at the queen through the flickering energy sphere. "She said that you kidnapped her, and were going to reprogram her into a puppet queen to rule the Earth in your name! If the Cluster is so _wonderful_, why would you have to reprogram her?"

"Now listen to me, you insolent whelp. One teenager's life is meaningless in comparison to the glory of the Cluster!" Vexus clenched her hands into a pair of twisted fists, and the orb above her head seethed with an orange fury. She was building herself to a level of rage that few robots ever lived to talk about. "I will capture that little fool XJ-9, and reprogram her, _and_ you, and as many other robots as it takes to spread my empire to every last star system in this galaxy! My destiny is to reign over every last robot, and enslave every last meat-creature, in the entire universe! My destiny is to become a _robotic god_! Compared to that, the life of one annoying little robot girl means absolutely nothing. The lives of a _million_ robots mean nothing! If I have to pave the planet Earth with a layer of robot bodies ten feet deep, it means nothing! All that matters is victory! For that is the Cluster's destiny! That is _my_ destiny!"

Allison could feel herself shaking in her bonds. The queen had whipped herself up into a rage that approached insanity. She realized that for the first time, she was seeing the true nature of Vexus. And she suddenly realized something else …

"You're afraid," she said, the words almost falling out of her mouth by accident. Allison grew bolder, and continued. "You're afraid of losing your power. Nothing makes you angrier that the idea of robots making decisions for themselves. Because then, those robots might choose not to follow _you_. Then you wouldn't be able to control them. And you're terrified of whatever you can't control …"

Vexus had reached her boiling point. She raised a demonic claw high above her head, her barbed fingers glowing a ugly blood-red, and screamed at the top of her voice. "Vexus fears NOTHING!" Allison cringed in her bonds, as the queen's killing blow rained down towards her chest …

There was a hideous flash, and the sizzle of electricity, and the sounds of electronic screeching and howling. Bolts of withering energy crackled around her …

But Allison didn't feel her circuits being shredded to bits. She didn't feel anything at all. She slid an eyelid open with the meekest of _whirrs_ …

And saw the queen hovering in front of the energy sphere, rubbing her claw … as if she was in _agony_.

Allison couldn't believe it. Stupefied, she watched Vexus swing her deadly claws at her again – and the instant the queen's hand touched the energy sphere, its surface exploded into a frenzy of defensive activity. White-hot bolts of lightning screamed out of the sphere and ran into the queen's arm, shaking the mighty Vexus back and forth like a rag doll in a dog's mouth. The evil queen grimaced and ground her teeth together, her eyes brimming with hatred and pain. She ripped her claws into the sphere again, and again, and again, attacking like a crazed animal. But none of her blows penetrated the energy sphere. They hadn't even damaged it – although now the eddies of energy and computer code flowing on its surface seemed tinged with a familiar green color …

"You can't get through it," said Allison, slack-jawed with wonder. "The energy sphere … it's not here to keep me from getting out, is it? It's here … it's here to keep _you_ from getting _in_."

Vexus rubbed her hands dejectedly, annoyed both with this infuriating LSN unit, and with herself for losing her cool in front of the robot girl. "I'm afraid these little get-togethers are growing rather boring, my dear Allison. And I have so many things to get done before the invasion fleet leaves for Earth … so I really must be off. Once the invasion and colonization is complete, there will be plenty of time to remove your electronic brain, dispose of it in the nearest recycling furnace, and have a more _reliable_ model installed. Good-bye, foolish girl."

And then the queen was gone, in a virtual whirlwind of crimson polygons. Allison stared once more at the flickering sphere of computer code that surrounded her, still in a state of wonderful shock. It wasn't a prison; it was a protective cage! Was this why Vexus hadn't assimilated her yet? Because she _couldn't_?!? But that was impossible, wasn't it? After all, there wasn't a robot in the entire universe that could resist assimilation by the almighty Queen Vexus!

_Well, that's not quite right_, she smiled to herself. _There's one_.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Eleven / Thirteen Hours to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	11. Ready Or Not, Here We Come

A/N – Again, thanks for the reviews, folks! I've finally got the story pretty much plotted now, and despite what I said after "Escape", it looks like this'll be another 18-chapter monster. Yeesh.

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Eleven – Ready Or Not, Here We Come

* * *

Tuck thrashed and punched with all his might, trying to beat back the horrific alien attackers, but their numbers were far too great, and they had him backed into a corner with no hope of escape. He couldn't see anything within arm's reach that he could use as a weapon. The hideous glowing yellow eyes peering at him from out of the darkness grew closer … and closer … and _closer_. Their overwhelming body odor and putrid breath smelled of rancid fish. The lead alien smiled down at Tuck, and slithered his long, slimy tongue between his fangs, coating his green swollen lips with disgusting digestive fluid. The little fellow kicked furiously, but the alien horde had him pinned to the floor. He could hear their ragged breathing, their terrifying growls … and the creepy music that played just before they ate your skin.

Cool slime drizzled down onto his face. He could feel the enzymes dissolving away his tender young flesh! "AAAUUUGGGHHH! Get back, you Martian mutant scum! Back, I say! You won't be feasting on grammar school student tonight …"

Then he opened his eyes and realized that he was flopping around on the bedroom floor, wrapped up in his Peter Proper bunny blanket … and the alien death slime was dripping from the corner of his big brother's mouth, who was snoring away. In one lightning-fast motion, Tuck leapt to his feet, vigorously rubbing his face dry with his shirttail. "EWWGHHH! BRAD!"

Brad snapped bolt-upright in his bed, sending papers and blueprints scattering in every direction. "GAAH! Benjamin Franklin crossed the Delaware in 1492 to defeat Saddam Hussein at Pearl Harbor … huh? Wha? Tuck? What are _you_ doing in history class?"

"Right now, I'm _drowning_," sneered Tuck, as he wiped his hands against Brad's bedspread. He was upset at himself for falling asleep halfway through _Martian Mutants IV_ – the little TV in Brad's bedroom was just showing static now – but apparently, Brad hadn't lasted much longer with his "scientific analysis" of Dr. Mogg's blueprints. "It's _morning_. You fell asleep while your 'razor sharp intellect' was studying those plans for the Z-Pack. So, have any luck figuring out all that complicated science junk and stuff? Or do I already know the answer to that question?"

Brad rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and frowned at the smug little smile of his irritating younger brother. Tuck could be such a pain sometimes. More so when he happened to be _right_. Brad had zonked out sometime around four in the morning, barely able to pronounce the scientific terms on the Z-Pack's schematics, let alone understand the design. The plans were unbelievably complex – just a _little_ more complex than the blueprints he'd drawn up for Tuck's soap box racer the previous summer. "For your information, shrimp boat, it just so happens that I'm on the verge of a major …"

"… You got nuthin'."

"… I got nuthin'," sighed Brad, as he tossed the last of the blueprints aside. "Who would have thought that a quantum flux energy reactor would be so complicated?"

"Why don't you just take the blueprints over to Mrs. Wakeman?" groaned Tuck, for what must have been the hundredth time since last night.

"Why don't _you_ go downstairs and get me some coffee?" snapped Brad. He dragged himself to his feet and wiped the sleep from his eyes. "Stupid gizmo … why is it giving Jenny so many power surges? Maybe it runs on DC, and she runs on AC …"

"You know, Brad, there's always the possibility that Jenny _might not_ be able to handle all that extra power, just like the scientist guy said." Tuck's eyes bugged out in alarm at that thought, and he clasped his hands to his cheeks. "_Ulp_ … that means she won't be able to stop the Cluster when they attack today. And if Jenny can't stop them, then Skyway Patrol can't stop them! And if Skyway Patrol can't stop them, then we're all gonna be Cluster slaves tomorrow! And if we're all gonna be Cluster slaves tomorrow …" – his face lit up with a huge grin – "… I say forget about the cholesterol, I'm having pancakes and bacon for breakfast! Last one downstairs is a Martian mutant!"

"Whatever," groaned Brad, as Tuck disappeared in a puff of smoke. He didn't feel like listening to his little brother's neurotic yammering right now, anyway. He ran a hand through his disheveled coppery hair, and gave his armpits a quick sniff. "So _what_ if I couldn't make sense of these stupid blueprints! Jenny and Mrs. Wakeman spent the _whole night_ working out the bugs in her new power pack. I'm sure they've got all the wrinkles ironed out by now."

The words had barely escaped his lips when he heard a colossal _crash_ come from the Wakeman house. That in itself wasn't terribly unusual, but it did signal that Jenny and her mother had emerged from the basement, and it gave him an excuse to head over to see what was going on. He slid on his black vest, took the stairs three at a time, and before his mother could ask him if he wanted some pancakes, he was out the door and halfway across the lawn. He leapt over the fence like an Olympic hurdler, filled with excitement for what was sure to be an action-packed day. His little brother may have been worried about Jenny's ability, but Tuck got nervous about unfamiliar flavors of ice cream. Brad had no such doubts in his mind. Jenny was a superhero, and he'd never seen her back away from a threat. There was no challenge she couldn't handle …

He was only three steps from the front door when the refrigerator slammed into the walkway like a ballistic missile, punching into the concrete a mere six inches in front of his toes. It had dropped out of the sky, seemingly out of nowhere, and had come terrifyingly close to squashing him like a grape. Even a calamity like _this_ wasn't completely unusual when you lived next door to the Wakemans, but it did take Brad a few seconds to get his heart beating again. With newfound trepidation, he tiptoed around the crumpled appliance and opened the front door.

He cautiously walked inside. "Uh … Jen? Dr. W? Uhhh … did you know your refrigerator is running?"

Then his eyes nearly shot out of their sockets. In spite of his best efforts, Brad couldn't stop himself from gawking at Jenny like something that had just walked out of circus sideshow. Her body was covered with long steel needles, at the end of each spun a small metal disk, like a propeller. They were jutting out of her head, her shoulders, her elbows and knees, the surface of the Z-Pack … there was even one stuck right between her eyes, all spinning like gyroscopes. He had never seen anything like it before; it was freakish and strangely hypnotic all at the same time. It actually took him a few moments to realize what an absolutely miserable mood Jenny was in.

She didn't notice him, though; she was staring straight up, through a series of holes that led up to the blue morning sky. "I think it's safe to call that yet _another_ failure, Mom," she said sullenly, "unless you'd like me to send the dishwasher into orbit, too."

Brad then noticed that the kitchen looked as if an army division had used it for live ammunition practice. Charred holes had been blasted into the floor and the walls, and a couple of small fires were burning on the counter top. The stove had been melted down into an unrecognizable lump of slag. Mrs. Wakeman's bleary eyes squinted out from her soot-covered face, fussing with the settings on a remote control. It was apparent that she hadn't gotten much sleep last night, either. "Now, now … do try to calm down, XJ-9, or you'll only make things worse! I'm fairly certain that if I can just find the right frequency, we can bleed off the Z-Pack's excess energy. It's just a matter of trial and error …"

"More like a _comedy_ of errors," huffed Jenny, who looked plenty tired herself. "I'm not even going to comment on how _hideous_ I look in this acupuncture getup. I resigned myself to mega-freak status _hours_ ago. I don't even think the kids at school are going to laugh at me. I think the very sight of me is going to give them all _brain seizures_." Then she finally glanced down, and saw Brad in the kitchen doorway, with his jaw hanging open like a Pez dispenser. "I rest my case," she moaned. "Hey, Brad."

"Jen!" said Brad, shaking his head clear. "What's going on? Early morning combat practice?"

A pair of black, smoking eggs dropped from the ceiling, landing on Brad's head with a dusty _thump_.

"No, I made _breakfast_," sighed Jenny. "Or at least I _tried_ to. But I guess I can't even do _that_ without messing up nowadays."

Mrs. Wakeman slipped on a heavy glove, and snatched the eggs away with a pair of tongs. "Careful … I suspect those eggs may be emitting hard gamma radiation."

"You did all this trying to make _breakfast_?" It wasn't the most supportive thing Brad could have said, but he was still amazed by the astonishing destruction unleashed upon the kitchen. He figured he'd better change the subject. "So what's the deal with all the spinny things?"

Jenny's pigtails drooped to her shoulders, and her eyes sunk back into their sockets. "These are my mom's _eighth try_ since last night to make my old, obsolete power circuits compatible with the Z-Pack stuck on my back! And as you can see, they work like a _charm_. I'm as graceful as a ballerina."

"The power dampers _should_ work, in theory, XJ-9," said the doctor, desperately trying to calm down her daughter. She worked the dials on her remote, trying to set the spin rate of the disks to a frequency compatible with the Z-Pack. "We need to find a way to get this equipment working properly, or else the planet Earth is …" – she heard a soft _ding_, and glanced at her watch – "… _toast_!"

Brad arched an eyebrow at Mrs. Wakeman. "Well, I admit the stakes are high, Doc, but …"

"No, Bradley … TOAST!" The doctor dove across the kitchen and tackled Brad to the floor …

Just as Jenny's chest-plate flipped open and ejected a pair of white-hot objects that shot through the air, shredding the front door into flaming splinters. The projectiles screamed across the street and sliced a telephone pole in half, before embedding themselves into a brick wall a quarter mile away. Only then were they remotely identifiable as smoking, carbonized slices of toast. Pumpernickel, to be exact.

"That's _IT_!" shouted Jenny. She balled her fists and grimaced with effort, and with a bright flash of light, all of the spinning disks and needles popped off of her body and ricocheted around the room. Brad and Mrs. Wakeman took cover under the remains of the kitchen table as Jenny launched into one of the most spectacular eruptions of emotion that either of them had ever witnessed. "I can't control all this power! I can't even make eggs over easy! Face it Mom, nothing you install on me, or plug into me, is going to make me compatible with this reactor! Mogg was right … I'm _obsolete_! I'm old technology! You might as well take off the Z-Pack. Maybe I'm still good for collecting ticket stubs at Wizzly World, but I won't be able to save the Earth. I'm gonna get my butt kicked today! I'm _useless!_"

And before Brad or the doctor could say anything to her, she stomped through the remains of the front door and slumped off towards school, pounding cracks into the sidewalk with every stomp of her feet. The tips of her pigtails flipped open, and sprayed a dark fog over her head, which formed into her very own personal cloud of gloom. Brad rushed to the door, stunned by what he'd just seen and heard. He had never seen Jenny this depressed before. Certainly not about her fighting abilities …

Mrs. Wakeman gasped for breath as she watched her robotic daughter trudge out of sight. Then she grabbed Brad by the arm. "Bradley, XJ-9 will listen to you – this is very, very important. I'm afraid she's developing a dramatic lack of control over her powers, and it's causing her to lose confidence in herself. She has _convinced_ herself that she is obsolete. You've _got_ to snap her out of it, somehow. There's a danger that a negative feedback loop will develop in her neural nets. As her confidence in her power drops, so will her self-control … which will, in turn, cause her confidence to drop even further. If Jenny believes that she's useless, then for all intents and purposes, she _will_ be. It's the same problem I ran into when I was field testing XJ-7. Robotic psychology can be a very delicate thing, you know … and her being a teenager does _not_ improve matters."

Brad snapped a crisp salute to the doctor, and took off in a sprint down the sidewalk, trying to catch up with his best friend. Mrs. Wakeman swabbed a blotch of soot from her cheeks and wiped it off on her lab coat, then sighed with frustration, and wrenched open the door of her shattered refrigerator. If XJ-9's neural nets collapsed into a negative feedback loop … in theory, she could turn herself into a babbling robotic vegetable. And just in time for the Cluster invasion. The doctor pulled out a crumpled carton of orange juice, turned back towards the house, and then realized that she wasn't alone.

Tuck was staring at her from the other side of the fence. "I missed something really _cool_, didn't I?"

"Quite the contrary," replied Mrs. Wakeman, in an ominous tone. "I'm afraid we find ourselves in the midst of a dire situation. XJ-9 cannot defeat the Cluster fleet without wearing the Z-Pack, but she cannot function as a global defense robot if she _does_ wear the Z-Pack. It appears we have been unsuccessful in correctly integrating the reactor with her power circuits."

"Hmmph." Tuck just stared blankly at the scientist for a few seconds, and took a long sip from his juice box. "Maybe the magnetrons on the trans-dimensional electron tap doo-dad aren't lined up correctly."

"No, I'm certain that they …" This time is was Mrs. Wakeman's turn to be confused. She stared in amazement at the little fellow while he took another sip from his drink box. Finally, she got the nerve to ask. "Tucker, how on Earth did you know what those things were?"

_Slurrrrrrrp._ "Blueprints up in Brad's bedroom," he quipped. _Slurrrrrrp._ "Want some pancakes?"

She blinked a few times, and gave Tuck a inquiring stare. "Blueprints?"

* * *

Drew leaned against the wrought-iron balcony and stared out from the seventieth-floor observation platform, marveling at a stretch of spectacular thousand-foot skyscrapers that lined the grand boulevard. Each tower had one wall that was free of windows, and was instead engraved with a fifty-story high fresco, bearing the likeness of a famous robot general or leader. The blue-tinted stainless steel portraits glistened like jewels when the rays of the crimson sun managed to break through the pale purple overcast. And they must have been an even more amazing sight for the robots in the hovercars that whined up and down the boulevard like a swarm of metallic hornets.

"Cluster Prime," he muttered to himself, as he gazed out at the amazing robot city. "I can't believe I'm actually back on Cluster Prime. _Geez_, Drew, what are you thinking?"

They'd already been on the ground for several hours, but standing here, back in the Cluster capital and surrounded by robots of every description, the reality of his situation hit him square in the face. He scratched the back of his bronze-colored head – he'd randomly shape-shifted into a different-looking robot, for obvious reasons – and realized just how lucky they'd been up to now. The would-be rescuers had landed the Stealth Wasp dozens of miles outside the city – ironically, hiding it in a recycling yard filled with old derelict spaceships. The capital was so heavily populated that they didn't dare try to land any closer that that. From the recycling yard, they'd made their way towards the towering spires of downtown, staying on foot whenever they could. Sheldon had offered to use the Silver Shell's rockets to fly them into the city, but Drew wanted to stay as inconspicuous as possible. He didn't want to buy a ticket for a hover-taxi or a monorail that could have left a traceable electronic trail. Right now, he didn't think there was such a thing as being _too paranoid_.

So by slowly and carefully winding their way through the east side of the capital, they'd made it to this outdoor observation deck, with its panoramic view of the city's steel towers. It was a decent place to pause and plan, although the view would have been much better from Mile High Tower. Drew allowed himself a quick glance skyward – it felt like just yesterday that he and Ally had gazed out over the city, together – then he shook away his daydreams, and focused once more on the horizon in front of him. Because right in front of him was the main reason he'd come here. This observation deck was only three miles away from the imposing, jagged silhouette of the Iron Pyramid – Queen Vexus' palace fortress.

Drew grew his eyes out a few inches, magnifying on the square-mile of fenced-off courtyard around the pyramid, and frowned at what he saw. Ten of thousands of drone guards. Twenty-foot tall sentry robots, armed with insanely large arm-cannons. And he could only imagine how many cameras and defense lasers there were that he couldn't see from here. No, directly approaching the palace would be suicide …

"Hey, look at this!" shouted an excited voice from behind him. Drew slapped his forehead in frustration, and turned to see the Silver Shell standing at a souvenir stand, playing with a tiny snow globe that held a replica of Mile High Tower. "Hee hee hee, look, it changes colors the harder you shake it! Wow, I bet Jenny would love something like this! Can you change a twenty?"

Drew snatched the snow globe out of the giant steel robot's hands, and set it back on the display shelf. He glared into the Shell's big, smiling face. "Having fun?" he growled.

"I'm having a lot more fun than I did the _last time_ I was here!" he answered, apparently not catching on to Drew's sarcasm. He held out a set of colorful pamphlets and booklets he'd picked up from the sales counter. "Check it out! Holographic comic books! Coupons for thirty percent off admission to the new amusement park! And I … heh-heh … think the robot girl at the counter wants to give me her phone number." He nervously glanced back at the cashier, and she gave him a wink and a wiggle of her antenna.

Drew's eye twitched in disbelief, then he smacked the Shell in the side of the head and pulled him aside. "C'mere, knucklehead!"

"Ow! Ow! Hey, chill out!" The Silver Shell swatted Drew's bronze hand away. "What's your problem? We've been walking around looking at stuff for half the day already. I thought the whole idea was to stop and rest our tired servos for a few minutes!"

"Okay, first of all, neither one of us actually _have_ any servos. Second of all, we are _not_ here on vacation, okay? And third of all, we came up to this platform so you could see if anything looks familiar to you!" Drew glanced left and right to satisfy himself that none of the other robotic tourists were paying any attention to them. "Sheldon," he whispered, "you said that you and Brad were taken underneath the palace by some kind of underground tunnel. That might give us a way to sneak inside. So do you see anything out there that even remotely looks familiar to you? A building, a tower, something you saw just before you went into the tunnel?"

"You know, now that I think about it, I remember that we were in cages before they loaded onto some kind of subway car." Sheldon shrugged his shoulders inside his exo-suit, and the Silver Shell did likewise. "I couldn't really see much of anything outside the cage."

"Well, that's just _great_," groaned Drew, rolling his eyes. "I am _so glad_ you came along with me."

The Shell folded his arms with an angry _humph_. "Look, why waste our time wandering around the city like this, when I can just hack into the ClusterNet and download a map of all the tunnels! It'll only take me a couple of minutes."

Drew tapped his chin nervously. "You're _sure_ you can do this without them detecting you?"

"They're not going to _detect_ me," the Shell said, with a broad grin and a dismissive wave of his hand. "Just leave it to me, all right? You're talking to the boy genius who hacked into Skyway Patrol's central computer and erased all of Jenny's outstanding arrest warrants!"

"You did _that_? _Sigh_ … all right, then …" Drew looked around, searching for anything that might be used as a computer terminal. All he saw were telescopes and souvenir stands, and a modest crowd of excited sightseers. In fact, hundreds of robots were now crowding towards the balcony, _ooh-ing_ and _aah-ing_ and pointing towards something high over their heads. Then Drew heard a faint roar coming towards him from a distance, almost like an ocean wave crashing on some distant shore. After a few seconds of confusion, he realized that it was _cheering_ – the sound of millions of synthesized voices cheering excitedly, all at once. He leaned over the balcony and looked down into the streets below, and saw that they were filled with throngs of celebrating robots. _What the heck was all the cheering about?_

"Uh, Drew …" The Silver Shell tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed straight up … as a giant shape blotted out the sun.

A titanic, cigar-shaped gold-and-bronze starship coasted over the towers of the capital, filling the air with a vibrating thrum from its mammoth anti-gravity engines. Hundreds of antennae and gun turrets jutted out from its fuselage like the claws of a giant centipede, and six inconceivably huge fusion rocket nozzles protruded from the rear of the ship, each large enough to hold the Iron Pyramid inside of it. The starship was over three miles long, triple the size and fifty times the mass of the spacecraft carrier they'd flown back to Earth. It was a floating island that dwarfed even the tallest towers and grandest buildings. And it was making a dramatically low and slow flyover of the capital, creeping in the direction of the Royal Palace Complex. Sheldon felt an instinctive stab of fear, being directly underneath such an impossible mountain of a vessel, but still he stared upwards in slack-jawed astonishment, unable to break his gaze.

A robotic father standing next to Drew hoisted a small, bulb-headed bot onto his shoulders and pointed at the unfeasibly large starship. "Look, son! Look! It's the queen's flagship! Queen Vexus is preparing the fleet to liberate another one of the barbarian planets!"

_That would be Earth_, Drew thought to himself, with a twinge of guilt. Maybe he should have stayed back home, to fight by Jenny's side … then he shook those thoughts from his mind. One silver-green mush-ball of an android wasn't going to make any difference to a whole planet. Especially not against something like _that_ monster. But he _might_ make a difference for one imprisoned LSN droid.

Drew rapped the side of the Silver Shell's torso. "Sheldon, now's our chance," he whispered. "Everyone's paying attention to Vexus' flagship. You see anything that looks like a computer you can hack?"

The Shell looked around and … "Bingo," he smiled. At the side of the balcony stood a tourist information kiosk that robots could use to get street maps, monorail schedules, and other useful facts about the capital. If the kiosk was connected to the city's computer network, then they were in business. While the crowd stared skyward, Drew and the Shell nonchalantly slid over towards the information terminal. Drew's bronze finger morphed into a silver-green cable, and slid into the kiosk's data port to plug into the network. Then a finger on the Shell's right hand flipped open to reveal another computer plug, which he stuck into the back of Drew's head. Now with the computing power of Drew's nanobots at his command, Sheldon cracked his knuckles and got busy on one of his computer keyboards.

"Hmmm … quantum security firewall," said the Shell, as complex code symbols spewed onto the kiosk's small display screen. "But no mere firewall can stand before the might of the Silver Shell, and his hard drive of justice!"

"Sheldon! Sheldon!" hissed Drew, his paranoia growing at an exponential rate. "Quiet! Zip it! Less talky, more hacky!"

Then a chorus of synthesized trumpets poured out from thousands of PA speakers, located all around the city, including one that had deployed directly above the observation platform. A split-second later, there was a flash of light from the top of Vexus' palace. Four huge virtual screens sprang to life in mid-air, each hundreds of feet tall, slowly rotating around the apex of the pyramid. More holographic screens blinked into existence on the surfaces of the skyscrapers, and public gathering places all throughout the capital. And on every screen was the sweet, smiling face of the beloved Queen and Supreme Leader.

"Citizens of the Cluster," boomed Vexus' voice, from everywhere at once. "This will be a glorious day for you, and for all robot-kind throughout the galaxy. For today, we go forth into the cosmos with our Great Liberation Fleet, to free another planet from the chains of organic oppression!"

A deafening roar rose up from the streets. "All hail Vexus! All hail Vexus!" Billions of robots, enthusiastically chanting her name, all totally convinced that Vexus was the good guy. Standing among so many brainwashed robots gave Drew the screaming willies … the Cluster was, in a weird way, the universe's biggest cult.

"After our victory today, the floodgates of robotic liberation will be thrown wide open, and night will fall upon the Organic Age!" The queen stretched her arms to the heavens, encouraging the crowd to cheer even louder than ever. "Nothing will be able to stand in our way! Nothing will be able to deny us our rightful destiny! Our noble liberators will spread peace throughout the galaxy, from one spiral arm to the other … and the Age of Robots will finally begin! Today, you are witness to history! You are witness to the shining dawn of a Greater Cluster Empire!"

And as the cheers of her adoring citizens filled the city, Vexus glowed with a purple aura, and disappeared into a shimmering transportation beam. The purple column of light leapt from her reviewing balcony on the Iron Pyramid, and streaked up to the massive flagship. Then the ship increased power to its colossal anti-grav generators, and started a gentle climb above the clouds, to be joined by four more giant warships that took up escort positions alongside her. The virtual screens stayed locked on the Royal Flagship, showing long-range camera views of the receding formation as they rose above the atmosphere and entered the blackness of space. They were flying towards the artificial ring, to join up with the thousands of warships that Drew and Sheldon had seen earlier. In a matter of moments, the so-called Liberation Fleet would make the jump to hyperspace.

Drew glanced back towards the Silver Shell. "This might actually work for us, Shell. If Vexus is heading off to Earth with all of her first-string goons, that means there's less of them in the palace for us to worry about." He gulped hard, and looked back at one of the giant virtual screens. "Wow, that's … that's an awful lot of ships. You think Jenny can really handle them all?"

A confident smile came to the Shell's face. "I think Jenny could handle ten times that many."

"I hope you're right," said Drew, before turning back to the gibberish on the information kiosk's screen. "C'mon, c'mon, how much longer is this going to take? Can't you make this go any faster …"

"_You two!_ What do you think you're doing?"

The deep, sinister voice felt like a punch to the back of Drew's head. His syrupy innards swirled around with sickening anxiety. Because the voice sounded eerily, unfortunately familiar.

Drew and the Silver Shell slowly turned around to see who was standing behind them.

The robot wasn't as tall as the Shell, but in its all-black paint with crimson trim, it looked far more intimidating. Tall and lean, with a tapered body, its twin red eyes peered angrily at them from the recesses of a dark, beak-shaped face. Its jet-black antennae swiveled in their direction, their tips glowing with a faint ruby light that hinted at the powerful lasers contained within them. It was instantly recognizable as one of the elite Black Mantis police-bots.

"You are making unauthorized use of Cluster computer hardware," sneered the Black Mantis robot. A panel unfolded on his forearm, and he pointed an electric stunner at Drew and the Shell. "State your names and serial numbers, immediately!"

"My … uh … my serial number?" babbled Drew. "Uh, right, serial number. My serial number is … ah … hang on, my serial number is …"

Sheldon whimpered and munched his fingernails nervously, looked at Drew's tall, bronze disguise, and blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. "C-3PO! His serial number is C-3PO. Right. Uh, which would make me … uh … heh-heh … R2-D2."

The Mantis robot deployed a spike-shaped computer probe from his other forearm. "Disconnect yourselves from that terminal immediately, and prepare for mind scan …"

In one smooth motion, Drew pulled his arm out of the kiosk, swung it towards the Mantis robot … and morphed it into a silver-green blade with a perfectly sharp edge. The Black Mantis robot actually had a moment to look surprised before it realized that its torso was no longer connected to its legs. Then a roundhouse punch from the Silver Shell's forearm crushed the insectoid robot's head into its neck, giving it the appearance of a mechanical turtle. Drew morphed back to his default silver-green self, grabbed the Shell by the arm, and sprinted for the doors that led back to the elevators.

"Hopefully, he didn't get a chance to send off a message," Drew shouted over his shoulder, "because if he _did_, our lives just got a whole lot more interesting!" The Shell nodded in understanding; they had to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the disabled Mantis robot, as fast as they could. And it was slow going trying to weave through the still-cheering crowds of robots, who were fanatically jumping and waving and pumping their metallic fists into the air. The would-be rescuers pushed their way back inside the building and struggled to get closer to the express elevators. Above the elevators, holographic display screens were floating, showing the mighty Cluster armada fully assembled against the starry background of space. Then thousands of brilliant pinpricks of light blossomed into existence all at once, and the warships of the fleet flung themselves into three thousand swirling vortices of color. The leap to hyperspace was completed just as the express elevator showed up. Drew and the Silver Shell squeezed in, feeling as small and powerless as two hunted teenagers could possibly feel.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Twelve / Six Hours to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	12. Demons, Ghosts, and Reflections

A/N – Sorry this chapter's a bit late. Work has been killer lately. As an apology, this chapter is a bit longer than normal. Man, I wouldn't be surprised if this story tops out at 100K words!

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Twelve – Demons, Ghosts, and Reflections

* * *

A mob of students stampeded down the corridor towards the cafeteria, eager to get in line for Pizza Day. The people who got there early got the good stuff. The people who got there late got tofu and goat cheese. Pity the poor soul who found herself in the path of a horde of hungry, pepperoni-deprived teenagers; it was tantamount to getting caught in the middle of the street during the Running of the Bulls. But the girl who was wandering down the hall just now was _not_ your average pour teenage soul. Just as she was about to be flattened by the wave of students, they peeled off to either side of her to avoid her, as if accidentally brushing against her would bring instant death.

It's not like Jenny could blame them. In the few short hours since the morning bell had started the day, she had pretty much demolished the English, Social Studies, and Biology classrooms. Two of the school's major corridors had been bathed with laid waste with plasma fire and napalm. An entire row of lockers had been squashed like an accordion. One of the stairwells had been closed off due to partial collapse. And there wasn't a single unbroken window left on the north side of the building. And all of it had been caused by random outbursts from Jenny Wakeman – the resident reject from a bad horror movie. Students whispered frantically to each other, speeding past their robotic classmate as fast as they could. Who could say when Mount Jenny would erupt again?

Jenny slowly shuffled down the hall in a miserable funk as if her feet weighed ten tons apiece. She was slumping so drastically that her hands almost dragged along the floor; her paint color seemed a grayer shade of blue, and her eyes were so darkened that some of the girls wondered if she'd gone Goth. And still that miserable Z-Pack clung to her back, like a parasite draining her of the will to live.

It was all so unfair. Not even two weeks ago, everything had been going great. The kids had finally started to accept her as a normal teenager. She could walk the halls and wave to her friends – well, people whose names she knew – and they'd wave back with a smile. Then the Omni-droid had come to Earth and ruined her name, turned her into a fugitive. After that, apparently not satisfied with wrecking her reputation, the Cluster had decided to ruin her _life_ by kidnapping her and her classmates. It was all her fault, she knew – she should have stopped them somehow. Yes, they'd made it back to Earth, but she should have stopped them from being kidnapped in the first place. And now she'd lost the only two other teenage robots she'd ever known – Allison and Drew. _Some hero I am, I can't even keep my friends safe._ And now she knew why. The Z-Pack just made her shortcomings all the more obvious. She was obsolete. Old technology. Last year's model. She was a slide rule in a world of supercomputers. The Z-Pack was a Formula One race car, and she was a Model T. With a mournful _whine_, her shoulders slumped even lower, and her pigtails hung weakly onto their bolts as if they would snap off at any moment.

So naturally, who should come down the corridor just then but her perpetual torturers, the Krust cousins. The school socialites were already smiling with satisfaction over one of Tiff's classic put-down jobs on a shy girl in Biology class. When they saw Jenny moping along in front of them, their eyes lit up with the joy of finding an easy target. "Ah, there you are, Jenny!" cooed Brit. "I wasn't sure whether or not I'd bump into you at lunch. I thought you might be busy ripping the water pipes out of the bathrooms. I believe they're the only part of the school you haven't destroyed yet."

Tiff burst into a nasty chortle. "Yeah, if the Cluster don't hurry up an' get here soon, there won't be anything left for them to blow up!"

Jenny didn't react as the Krusts broke into cruel laughter. She didn't mutter a word of protest; she simply stared at them blankly, while their insults rained down on her like a barrage of laser fire. She didn't try to defend herself from any of it. She didn't even react to the warning alarms and diagnostic messages that flashed in her vision, on the inside of her eyes. _Caution – Mood-O-Tron exceeding designed safety limits. Caution – power levels becoming unstable. Caution – neural net integrity dropping._

"My, she appears to be speechless, dear cousin," chuckled Brit, cleaving her gloved hands to her chest. "Hmm, we really must think of a way to cheer her up. I know! We can check to see if Justin Spitzer is in the cafeteria! Maybe … _snicker_ … maybe he still needs a date to the _prom_!"

Tiff clutched her ribs, near delirious with laughter. "Oh, dat's hot! Dat's hot! _Ha, ha, ha!_ Hey Jenny, so what if Justin wasn't a marshmallow fluff kind of guy? You could always try drowning him in a couple of thousand gallons of chocolate syrup, and see how that works! Ha, ha, ha!"

And as the laughter of Krusts faded away into the lunch room, a nervous twitch fluttered in Jenny's right eye. The prom – ah yes, the prom. She'd almost forgotten what a complete fool she'd made of herself yesterday, right in front of Justin, and the whole school. It was only too obvious now that Justin had _never_ had any intentions of asking her to the prom. The rumors had just been rumors, nothing more. In fact, with only two days to go until the prom, she was totally dateless. Big surprise … just add 'Social Interaction' to the big list of XJ-9 failures. But then again, there wasn't even going to _be_ a prom unless she defeated the Cluster this afternoon. Defending the Earth was something she was still good at … wasn't she? _Caution – brain operation degrading. Caution – neural net integrity at sixty percent and dropping._

Suddenly, her right pigtail twitched up in alarm. Her auditory systems still worked perfectly, and she heard the cry for help loud and clear. A glimmer of alarm flashed in her eyes. Someone was shouting from the parking lot, somebody in pain … and one microsecond and one voice match later, she realized that the person in danger was _Brad!_

With a gust of wind like the exhaust from a rocket launch, Jenny disappeared into a blur of motion. She exploded through the last untouched wall in the school, tore through the Music room in the middle of band practice, and flew through a plate-glass window into the outside air, like a mortar shell blasting from the mouth of a cannon barrel. In the midst of the bricks and plaster crashing onto the ground, she heard Brad's voice cry out again …. "Help! _Haaalp!_ Jenny!"

It only took a quick scan to locate him. Brad was lying motionless on the pavement in the parking lot, with a pool of sticky red liquid on his chest … underneath the rear tires of a school bus!

"Oh, no! BRAD!" Unstable energy surged through her circuits, and she leapt into full-tilt superhero mode. Brad was only fifty yards away, but Jenny still broke the sound barrier getting over to him. A deafening sonic boom cracked across the parking lot, shattering the windows of every parked vehicle and building within a one-block radius. But all that mattered to Jenny was removing the crushing weight from Brad's wounded chest. Her arms ratcheted out and grabbed onto the chassis of the school bus, and she gave it a mighty heave. The heavy yellow bus shot into the air like a stray newspaper in a hurricane, punching through a puffy white cloud before simply disappearing into the sky.

Jenny dropped to her knees and examined Brad's chest, being extremely careful not to touch or move him. "Brad! Are you all right? Brad, say something!"

Brad gripped his chest in his hands, creaked open his eyes, and moaned dramatically. "_Ohhh_ … there I was, walking across the parking lot, innocently enjoying a carefree day of education … when from out of nowhere, a runaway school bus hurtles towards me like a rampaging hippo! I was pinned under the tires … I thought I was road kill for sure!" Then he broke into a huge grin, and slapped his hand on Jenny's shoulder. "But then you showed up and snatched me from the Grim Reaper's cold, merciless hands! You saved me, Jenny! You're a hero!"

The tiniest of smiles crept onto Jenny's face. "Well, it was just a lucky thing that I was so close … hey, wait a minute." She cocked a confused eyebrow at him. "Where's the driver of the bus? He just ran you over and _walked away_?"

"Ahh … err …" Brad tugged nervously at his shirt collar. "Did I say the bus hurtled towards me like a rampaging hippo? I meant the parking brake slipped, and it _rolled_ onto me. Yeah, rolled. Uh … like a … rampaging hippo."

"Brad, what are you …" She dipped a finger into the sticky red fluid on Brad's chest, and examined it closer. "Brad … why are you covered in _spaghetti sauce?_" she growled.

"Wha … see, the thing is … okay, I just _happened_ to be cooking pasta for the basketball team's pre-game meal, when the bus …"

"Uh-huh. Yeah, _right_." Jenny drifted back into her deep blue funk. "Real funny joke, Brad. Guess it's all that a screw-up like me is good for nowadays. Why don't you just slap a 'kick me' sign on my back? That's always good for a chuckle or two."

"No! No, wait, Jen, you don't understand!" Brad jumped to his feet, in remarkable health for a guy who'd just been 'crushed by a bus', desperately trying to explain himself. "It _wasn't_ a joke! See, the important thing is, you thought that I was in danger … okay, even though I, maybe, wasn't exactly … but you thought I was, and you rushed over and snatched that killer bus away at the last second! And who knows? I mean, maybe the parking brake _really was_ about to snap loose! It could happen! The bus driver doesn't look like the kind of lady who keeps up to date on her regularly scheduled maintenance …"

She squinted at him in disbelief. "Have you gone _completely_ off your rocker, Brad? Nobody was in danger from that school bus …"

Suddenly they heard a whistling sound coming from the sky, and looked up to see a yellow school bus punch through the clouds, screaming towards the ground at terrific speed. What goes up must come down, and the school bus that Jenny had thrown into the stratosphere was hurtling back to earth like a comet. Fortunately, it was going to crash outside of the populated part of town. _Unfortunately_, it was going to crash into Tremorton's one and only oil refinery. There was a spectacular flash of light on the horizon, and an orange pillar billowed into the sky, forming an ominous, flaming mushroom cloud.

Jenny turned to Brad with a nasty scowl on her face. "… nobody was in danger, at least until _I_ came along. Thanks _again_." She slumped back towards the school, in an even deeper state of depression.

"But I was just trying to … cheer … you … up." Brad babbled for a few more seconds, then shrugged his shoulders and just watched his friend disappear back into the battered remains of the school. _I sure didn't do a very good job of it._ He really had been trying to cheer Jenny up, but in her current frame of mind, that seemed all but impossible. What was it with teenage robots, anyway? He thought Drew was the resident black cloud of gloom these days. But that stupid Z-Pack had Jenny in such a dark mood that she made Drew look like a cheerleader in comparison. This was different from Jenny's usual angst and moodiness. This was serious. Dr. Wakeman had said that her robotic brain might even become unstable. From what Brad had seen so far today … it was already happening. _She has convinced herself that she is obsolete_, Mrs. Wakeman had told him. _You've got to snap her out of it, somehow._ Yeah, right … how in the world was he supposed to snap her out of this?

* * *

Retrieve updated invasion plans from Military Tactical Database … _ACCESS DENIED_.

Establish connection to Hyperspace Communications Array … _ACCESS DENIED_.

"Aww, c'mon, gimme a break here …" – Display command interface for Drone Hive Mind. Log in to Nightly Backup System Mainframe. Download master encryption keys … _ACCESS DENIED._

"_Arrrghh!_" Allison slumped in her tangled web of wires, silently mocked by the swarm of virtual windows that hovered in front of her face, each bearing the simple phrase _Access Denied_. With the Cluster Fleet on its way, her workload had slowed down to an almost leisurely pace, and would stay slow until just before the fleet arrived at Earth. Ally was trying to make good use of the time by poking and snooping around in cyberspace, looking for a way to free herself, or to get a message to the outside world. Normally, she wouldn't have had any trouble accessing _any_ computer system in the Great Network. But the Cluster assimilation protocols that dominated her higher brain functions were putting serious limits on what she could and couldn't do.

For the past five days, she'd helplessly watched and suffered while her mind obediently churned through mountains of data, helping to prepare the very war fleet that would enslave her new friends. She'd managed to piggyback a hidden message into Queen Vexus' long-distance gloat, but that was about it; she wasn't having much luck initiating anything on her own. Here she was, plugged into the center of the most complex computer network in all of existence … and she couldn't even make a phone call! She glanced at the shimmering, translucent sphere of energy that surrounded her like a smoky soap bubble. After it had protected her from Vexus' vicious cyber-attacks, she'd hoped that she might be able to somehow use its power to break free … but so far it seemed that it served only as a defensive shield. She was still as trapped as ever.

Flashes of light and data streaked around her, and a minor report raced through her processing nodes with an update on the War Fleet's position. Allison obediently processed the report and filed it in the archives, then moaned sadly. The fleet was more than halfway to Earth. Her thoughts drifted to the new significance of that small blue planet whose name she'd barely known of a week ago. She thought about her new friend Jenny; she owed Jenny so much, for showing her the truth about the Cluster, and the cruel nature of its evil queen. She was grateful to have learned the truth, even in spite of everything that had happened to her since. Allison felt like she was already in mourning for Jenny; she couldn't imagine that the Earth robot girl would survive a battle against the mighty Cluster War Fleet, no matter how powerful she was. It had been such a blast being with Jenny at the Galleria last week … laughing and shopping, hanging out at the lube court, checking out robot boys …

Allison closed her eyes and sighed. _The one with those cute green stripes all over his body …_

She replayed the files in her memory banks for what must have been the thousandth time. Those big dark eyes that made her feel weak in the knee joints, smiling out at her from behind that swath of silvery hair … the cute way his cheeks turned soft green whenever he got embarrassed. The electric tingle she felt in her wires when he held her hand … the fun they had dancing together at Festival Square. The haunted look on his face when he'd told her about the accident that had cost him his leg, and how he understood why she felt so self-conscious about her replacement arm. _When I look into your eyes, Ally … I think I can see my soul reflecting back at me …_ the warmth and intimacy of the tender mind-kiss that had followed those words. She shivered in her bonds, and a soft, glowing tear trickled down her ghostly cheek. She'd only met him a week ago, but the pain of losing him burned in her circuits with a ferocity that Vexus' claws could only hope to match.

Then the pleasant memory was rudely interrupted by a flash of yellow light from a distant part of the ClusterNet. A new batch of video data rushed into the pathways of Ally's brain, another instruction from an unseen master that kicked her processing matrix into high gear. Her decoding algorithms revealed that it was a police report filed by a Black Mantis unit. Allison rolled her eyes with a huff; just another stupid message to file, and copy out to all the other Mantis goons roaming the capital. _Let's get this over with_, she groaned, as the implants in the back of her head buzzed with activity.

A new data window popped into existence in front of her face, and the boring details of the police report spilled out in rows of soft green text. "Mantis Unit 538 filing an incident report, _blah blah blah_, location grid co-ordinates and timestamp, _blah blah blah_ …"

_Whoa._ "Black Mantis Unit 539 has been found _sliced in half?_" Allison arched an eyebrow, and started to pay closer attention to the police report. The Black Mantis robots were tough, and ruthless – they'd given her the chills, even before she'd learned their true nature – she'd heard that even the army officers were scared of them. But a pair of robots had attacked a Mantis robot at an observation deck _only three miles away_ from the palace – and left it in a smoking heap! She shook her head at the foolhardiness of the unknown attackers. "_Phew_ … when the rest of the Black Mantis find out about this, they'll hunt them down like robotic dogs!"

The report included a video clip taken from Mantis-539's log file, which opened up in a second window next to the first. The picture crackled to life, and showed two odd, nervous robots – a silver-colored hulk with a giant swirl on his chest, and a lanky, bronze-colored rattle-trap. They had gotten caught hacking into a tourist information computer, then the bronze fellow started babbling something about his serial number, and the Mantis unit tried to perform a mind scan …

Then she saw the robot's arm stretch out into a thick gooey paste, and form a razor-sharp, silver-green machete … and suddenly she felt that all of her fuses would blow at once.

"Impossible …" she gasped, "… that's _impossible!_"

The video continued, showing the lightning-fast blade delivering its deadly blow, followed by a mighty punch from the mysterious silver giant … then the bronze robot amazingly turned into a flowing pillar of silver-green slush, and re-formed into young teenage robot boy …

With _cute green stripes_ all over his body …

And then the video file ended, trailing off into a blathering stream of official statistics for filing.

Allison gasped in shock and amazement. She couldn't feel her arms or legs anymore, even her virtual ones. Time felt like it was speeding up and screeching to a halt all at once. An uncontrollable smile came to her face, and she swore she could feel her hydraulic fluid swirling around inside of her like a giddy whirlwind. Only her state of shock kept her from screaming out at the top of her voice … _Drew! _That was_ Drew!_ Here, on Cluster Prime … within sight of the palace! _I don't believe it … I thought I would never see him again!_ For the first time in days, despite being imprisoned in cybernetic limbo, she felt like she would burst with joy. Drew was here on Cluster Prime, with a large, strange silver robot … probably some kind of elite robotic super-commando, she figured. What in the galaxy was he doing back here? Reconnaissance? Sabotage mission? Guerilla attack?

No, as crazy as it seemed, she knew deep inside why Drew was here. He had come back to _rescue her_.

She felt a chaos of excitement bubbling up in her circuits. He came back for her! He was risking his life and his freedom to save her! _He's so brave! He's so magnificent! He's …_

She blinked her eyes a couple of times as reality set back in. "He's CRAZY! I don't believe this – he's absolutely _nuts!_ What is he _thinking_? If he gets caught, there's no telling _what_ they'll do to him! He's going to get himself _killed_ …"

A message blinked impatiently on the data window in front of her. "Mantis-538 recommends arrest and detention of two suspects identified in this video. Issue All Points Bulletin to all Mantis units."

Then Allison groaned and shook in her bonds, as she felt flickers of data and code racing in and out of the horrid connectors that invaded her brain and body. The Cluster assimilation protocols were compelling her to obey. Obey, obey, OBEY. She had to send out an alarm right away, that would make Drew the most hunted robot on Cluster Prime. _No, I won't …_ Do it NOW. Obey. Now. Obey. NOW. _No, I'm tired of taking orders_ … she winced in her web of circuitry, trying to resist the Cluster command … but it was strong. VERY strong. Obey. Obey. _I won't put Drew in danger!_ Send the alarm NOW. OBEY, LSN-1482. _Nnnghhhh … noooo … have to … stop it …_ OBEY, NOW. _OBEY!_

The commands were too strong. She couldn't prevent the alarm from going out …

But she _could_ modify it.

Her processing nodes glowed with brief activity, and microseconds later, an alert message went out on the Black Mantis command frequency. "Two robots, a large silver brute and the treacherous shape-shifting nano-droid, wanted for immediate arrest. They are to be presumed armed, and dangerous, and Mantis units are instructed to shoot to kill on sight. The robots are enemies of the Cluster and all robot-kind. All Mantis Units be informed, their last known position was …"

"_… _at the high-speed monorail station, boarding a train for the other side of the planet."

_Thousand of miles away from here_, Allison sighed in relief, feeling some satisfaction in her little act of digital vandalism. With luck, maybe she had managed to help Drew out a little. Hanging limp and motionless in her neon webbing of circuitry, she surveyed the bizarre cyberspace realm in which she was trapped, and allowed a small smirk to come to her face. _Maybe there was more that she could do from in here,_ she thought. Maybe she could keep an eye out for Drew, from within the ClusterNet. _Maybe I'm not as helpless as I thought I was._

* * *

The police hovercraft wailed through the busy skies of the Cluster capital, buzzing low over the stainless steel rooftops of the Western Industrial Sector. Dozens of identical thirty-story warehouses flashed by as its scanning beams swept back and forth, looking for any signs of suspicious activity. Security in the capital was always a top priority, but things were running at an even higher alert level since the strange natural disaster that had struck the city five days ago. From up here, the civilian police-bot could still see the strange oval-shaped craters running down the wide urban avenue. He didn't believe any of the kooky rumors buzzing around the city, although he _did_ have to admit that the craters _did_ kind of look like giant footprints. But all he cared about now was that there was no sign of any troublemakers in Sector Gamma-73. The hovercraft banked left, and disappeared around the corner of a giant skyscraper.

And once it was gone from view, an industrial exhaust fan atop one of the warehouses began to shimmer like a block of silver-green gelatin. Then it tipped up, and out crawled the Silver Shell, who anxiously scanned the skies like a nervous chipmunk looking for falcons. "Is he gone? Is he gone?"

The 'industrial fan' oozed back into android form, and Drew motioned for his ungainly partner to lower his voice. "He's gone, but I imagine one of his buddies will be back in a couple of minutes. There's drones all over this city like mosquitoes in a swamp! All right, let's go." He snuck over to the edge of the rooftop, lying prone on his stomach, and grew his eyes out into a pair of telescopic lenses. The Silver Shell crawled up beside him, as flat as he could manage with his giant barrel chest.

Sheldon's hacking had almost gotten them caught, but it _had_ succeeded in downloading a copy of the tunnels running into the Royal Palace. Unfortunately, Drew sighed to himself, knowing where the tunnels _were_ and actually getting _into_ them were two very different things. Just like every other tunnel entrance they had scouted in the past few hours, the one below them was overflowing with hundreds of vigilant roach-drones. A pair of nasty-looking heavy laser guns stood sentry at either side of the entrance. Drones on small hover-scooters buzzed in loose circles overhead, watching for any unwanted activity. And this was just at the mouth of the tunnel, five miles away from the palace itself! There had to be even more cameras and patrols inside the stupid thing …

Drew let his eyes shrink back to normal, and slumped his face into his arms. "Those tunnels are guarded like _crazy_," he moaned. "We'd have better luck breaking into Fort Knox …"

Then he noticed that the Silver Shell was sitting upright and cross-legged, with a blank expression on his metallic face. He could hear a faint high-speed tapping coming from within the giant robot's chest. "Sheldon," he hissed, "what the heck are you doing?"

A tiny door slid open in the side of the Shell's torso. "Phew! There we go … wow, I needed to get a little fresh air in here!" Sheldon had temporarily stowed the Shell's control sticks away, and was focusing on one of his computer monitors. He pulled a length of red licorice from a dispenser wheel and started chewing. "While you take your little _pictures_, I'm going to work on a couple of my new hacking programs … and I'm going to look over the rest of the maps that – _I_ – downloaded! Not only did I find all the tunnels, but I got the blueprints for the inside of Vexus' palace, too! Now, all I have to do is find that secret lab where they keep the nanobots …"

"Okay, let's get one thing straight right now. Once we find a way into the Iron Pyramid, we're going after Allison _first_."

"_Nuh-uh!_ _I've_ got the maps, so _I_ decide where we go first!"

"Hey, Ally is more important than any stupid batch of nanobots!" Drew pointed an angry finger towards Sheldon's ventilation door. "She could be hurt, or disassembled, or even … geez, I don't even want to think about it. We've got to get to her somehow. Oh, man, she's got to be so afraid right now … she's been afraid of being disassembled ever since she spent all that time in the repair shop, after that monorail accident. _Geez,_ she was lying there for days in the repair bay, with half of her systems turned off … plugged into an external battery … she couldn't move or talk while the mechanics worked on her … she didn't even know if she was going to be _scrapped_ or not! And she was surrounded by all these monitors, and spare parts, hanging from the ceiling like some robotic butcher shop …" He sunk his face into his hands, plagued with worry …

Sheldon paused for a moment, with a curious expression on his face. "Wow, Drew … you talk about it like you were actually _there_."

"Well, I _was!_ I mean … well, I wasn't. Of course I wasn't. But …" – he pushed his silver-green bangs out of his eyes, confused and upset – "… _arghh_, this is so weird, Sheldon! Of course I wasn't there, but I remember what the room looked like. I remember what the beeping monitors sounded like. I remember how afraid Ally was … except, I know that she didn't _tell_ me about any of this! She didn't tell me, but I swear, I can remember it! I remember it, almost as if it happened to me!"

"_Ah-ha_, I knew it! I knew it! See, that confirms my theory! Sheldon Lee, you're a genius!" He thrust out his chest and smiled proudly, all while continuing to hammer away at his computer keyboard. "I knew there was something different about the way robots _kiss!_ Hee hee hee hee!" _Snort! Blush!_ "This means that my brain interface invention will work just the way I imagined it would! Hee hee, I can hardly wait to get back to Jenny, to test out my little _present_ to her. Ah, I can just imagine my sweet angel's forehead pressed up all snuggly close against mine … Oh, _rapture_ …"

"Whoa whoa whoa … the way robots _kiss_?" Drew looked at Sheldon as if the little nerd had just grown a second head. "Okay, you're losing me here."

"You mean you haven't figured it out yet?" Sheldon shook his head and gave Drew a condescending smile, and started babbling excitedly. "Robots like you have computer brains, which generate radio waves, just like a wireless network! When two robots press their foreheads together to kiss, their networks _overlap_ each other … and if the networks are tuned the right way, and they're compatible, then the robots can actually exchange data, just like sharing a file between two computers! It's a brain interface! _Cool,_ huh? That's where all those strange data files in Data Bank 546-A came from! They're pieces of data from Allison's memory banks!"

Sheldon had explained the process with a techno-geek's enthusiasm, as if he was describing a cool new way to download songs … but Drew gulped hard, as he realized what Sheldon was _really_ saying. He had exchanged memories with Allison … and there were snippets of her memory stored in his data banks. Deep, private memories … maybe she had even selected which ones to share with him. He closed his eyes, and dwelled on that thought for a bit. Somewhere deep inside his mind, he was carrying a tiny piece of Allison around with him …

"Hey, wait a _minute!_" Drew's face snapped up, and he arched an irritated eyebrow at Sheldon. "How, _exactly_, did you know that those memory files were in Data Bank 546-A?"

Sheldon's face drained itself of all color. "Umm … well, I, uh … lucky guess?"

Drew leapt to his feet and stretched his neck, flowing his head inside the Shell's torso to within six inches of Sheldon's nose. "You _rat!_ You snooped in my memory! When you downloaded my brain Tuesday night … you read through my memory files! You rotten, sneaky little creep …"

Sheldon raised his hands defensively as Drew's cheeks glowed an atomic red. "Hey hey hey, _you_ asked _me_ to download your brain, remember? I _had_ to search through all the files, in order to make that Cluster anti-virus program for you! I just happened to … _heh-heh_ … find a few other interesting chunks of code while I was rummaging around in there. I didn't hurt anything! I mean, that's how I figured out how to build my human-robot brain interface …"

Drew stretched an arm inside the Shell, and waved an angry fist under Sheldon's chin. "I'm gonna interface your human brain with my robotic _knuckles_, pal!" Sheldon got nervous …

And slammed his palm down onto a panic button, and the Shell's control sticks snapped back up into his waiting hands. The mighty robot whirred back to life, and gave Drew a shove in the chest, knocking him backwards onto his butt. Drew was hopping mad, and gave the Shell a hard shove back. The supposed partners abandoned any pretense of stealth, forgot about their 'mission', and started shoving each other back and forth in almost comical fashion, like a pair of eight-year-olds fighting on the school playground at recess. The Silver Shell blocked a wildly thrown silver-green fist, and wrapped Drew up in a headlock. While the teen android struggled, Sheldon deployed a new attachment from the Shell's right wrist. He'd wanted a chance to test out the new Atomic Noogie attachment …

The two robots became so wrapped up in their wrestling match that they didn't notice the Cluster police hovercraft until it roared over their heads. The argument came to an immediate halt, and they desperately scrambled for a hiding spot. The hovercraft slowed down, made a gentle loop in the sky, and floated down towards the roof … it was coming back to land! They'd been spotted! Drew and the Shell ducked behind a satellite dish, then they dove behind a ventilator fan that was only slightly bigger than they were. The roof was large and flat, and there really weren't any other good places to hide …

The police hovercraft settled down on its landing struts, its canopy flipped open, and an eight-foot tall civilian police robot stepped with a heavy _thud_. He deployed a bullhorn from his thick left arm, and held it up to his mouth-grill. "Attention, attention, this is a restricted area. We know you're out there. Come out and be identified. You have ten seconds to comply …"

There was nothing but silence. A second police-bot got out of the hovercraft, deployed a huge stun cannon from his arm, and nodded to his partner. They started walking towards the ventilator fan …

When the Silver Shell stepped out, swinging his arms with a cocky grin and purposeful strut. But he didn't _look_ like his normal, swirl-chested self. Amazingly, the Shell's metallic body seemed to have gotten an instant repaint! Instead of the usual mix of light and dark grays, the Silver Shell's body now sported a mix of drab burgundy and olive green, with gold stripes on his shoulders … an exact replica of the Cluster police-bot's uniform. "Nothing to worry about, guys," boomed the Shell, in his easy-going, baritone voice. "Just doing a little routine patrol. Yep, nothing at all around here. This roof is secure. _Yessirree_, roofs don't get any more secure than this one …"

The police-bots exchanged an annoyed glance with each other, and folded their arms back up with a series of ratcheting _clanks_. "Nobody told us there were foot patrols on the roofs," said the senior police-bot. "Didn't we see another guy up here with you?"

"Uhh … yes! Yes, you did. Ah, it was just some punk robot kid that wanted to watch the drones marching around." The Shell waved off their concerns with a dismissive smile. "I chased him off. Nothing to worry about, guys."

"Well, this was a _fantastic_ waste of time. Thanks, buddy." The two police-bots dragged themselves back into their hovercraft, and with a burst of power from their anti-grav engines, they climbed back into the traffic pattern, and disappeared from sight as quickly as they'd appeared in the first place. The Silver Shell waved as the hovercraft flew off, then let out a massive sigh of relief. "_Phew_, that was a close one!"

"You're telling me." Suddenly the Silver Shell's new paint job came to life. The new colors started to flow off of him, as if they were a layer of watercolor paints being washed off in the rain. Moments later, the colors spiraled into a puddle at the Shell's feet, and shimmered into a silver-green color. Drew reverted to android form, and planted his fists on his hips, annoyed both with Sheldon, and with himself for losing his temper. "That was pretty smooth talking there, Sheldon. Good job." He scratched at the back of his head, and managed to bring himself to look the Shell in the face. "Uh … sorry I got mad, there."

"Yeah, well … " – the huge silver robot rolled his eyes and sighed – "… ahh, I'm sorry I read through your memory files without your permission. And it was kind of cool, the way you turned yourself into a layer of camouflage for me. It worked out pretty well."

"Thanks," replied Drew … then he tapped his chin, and started to think for a second. "Hmmm, it did work out pretty well, didn't it?"

Drew got an idea. A crazy one.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Thirteen / One Hour to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	13. Just Beneath the Surface

A/N – Holy smoke, another very long chapter. Hope it's worth it. Please review!

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Thirteen – Just Beneath the Surface

* * *

Even from a distance, the Royal Palace Complex was awe-inspiring, intimidating, and overwhelming. A square mile of land had been flattened, paved with steel plating, enclosed by a tall iron fence, and guarded with sentry towers. Behind the fence, tens of thousands of roach-drones marched and drilled in precise military formations. And beyond them, the Iron Pyramid soared into the sky like a black mountain; its crisscrossing trusses of gunmetal gray loomed a thousand feet into the air, with tall steel obelisks encircling the palace like a giant ring of teeth. Atop the apex of the dark pyramid sat a immense copper-colored dome that glinted in the crimson sun, topped with sleek jeweled spires that rose up to pierce the clouds. From base to tip, Vexus' palace was almost half a mile tall. It could have contained the entire population of Wyoming within its walls. For Pete's sake, it was visible from _space_.

_And somewhere inside of it_, Drew moaned to himself, as he gazed out of the window, _is a beautiful, lonely robot girl who's fighting for her life. Please, please let this work._

The hover-taxi cruised to a smooth landing in an area busy with everyday traffic, two blocks away from the wide boulevard that encircled the palace grounds. Drew and the Silver Shell climbed out of the cab, and wandered along a sidewalk filled with ordinary Cluster citizens who were innocently going about their daily routines. Drew glanced left and right, making sure that nobody was paying any attention to them. They slipped around the corner of the Recharge Bistro, and ducked into an alleyway …

With a gurgling _schwerrrp_, he liquefied his body, and flowed over the surface of the Silver Shell's chassis like a nanobot exo-skin. He made a few changes in the Shell's color and appearance, his colors grew darker, the lines of his form more angular. Fortunately, the Silver Shell was just the right size to make this little deception work. Then the unlikely duo checked their reflection in a nearby window, gathered their collective nerve, and started walking towards the palace gates.

* * *

Jenny meandered down the school's last intact corridor, kicking up clouds of plaster dust and fragments of drywall as she slumped towards her locker. Two more classes out of the way, two more classrooms in need of total reconstruction – and two more teachers in need of extended vacations. By now, everyone in the school with a shred of common sense was avoiding Jenny like the black plague. The Z-Pack power spikes that raged through her circuits were growing worse with every passing minute. She had tried to shut off her superhero mode hours ago, but that _still_ hadn't kept a few random outbursts of super-strength from leveling the north wall of the gym. _Fat lot of good a superhero is, who can't even run in superhero mode_, she moped to herself. _Just one more thing that I messed up at ..._

"Jenny! Hold up! I've got something to show you!" Brad came running down in the hall in hot pursuit of her, waving a video disc over his head.

Jenny rolled her eyes to herself; it seemed like Brad had been two steps behind her all afternoon – bugging her with an endless series of very transparent attempts to 'cheer her up'. _Yeah, like that'll accomplish anything. Why should I bother cheering up? I'm just a machine, after all._ He was really starting to get on her nerves, in a way she thought that only Sheldon was capable of. She just wanted to be alone right now, in her final hours as a teenage robot. _Bzzt. Fzzap. Neural Net Malfunction. Logic Error._ The rest of the school had clued in to the truth – she was a malfunctioning weapon, a broken contraption, a faulty gizmo that wasn't worth wasting time on.

She managed to ignore him until she got to her locker, when Brad pulled up in front of her, mildly out of breath. "All right, I swore I would never touch this thing without protective gloves, but since you're gonna save the Earth today it's kind of a special occasion, so I rented, just for you …" – he held out the video like it was a stinky diaper – "… that new Ian McCulley chick flick, '28 Things I Hate About You'. After you _smoke_ the Cluster fleet, we can watch it over on one of your big-screen monitors!"

Jenny took the video from his hands, casually glanced at Ian's super-cute face on the case cover … and tossed it over her shoulder. "Well, seeing as how the Cluster fleet is probably going to blow me into a million tiny pieces of glowing shrapnel by tonight … picking out a movie to watch is pretty much a waste of time. Now, Brad, if you don't mind, I'm going to the library for study period, so I can finish writing my last will and testament. _Bzzt. Error. Neural Net at 30 percent._ Besides, the library is the only room in the school I haven't completely _trashed_ yet, and I though I'd go for the _clean sweep_."

"_Aarrgghh_, that's it!" Brad shouted, throwing his hands up in disgust. He'd finally exhausted his reservoir of optimism and positive attitude, with nothing to show for it. "Jenny, I've tried everything I can think of to pull you out of this stupid gloomy _mood_ of yours all day, but nothing I do or say does any good! What the heck is going _on_ with you?"

"So my _moods_ are messed up now, too. Well, what do you expect from last year's model?" Jenny started to dial in the combination for her locker door – then she stopped. "Oh, who am I kidding," she moaned, "we both know I'm going to screw up, and rip this door off its hinges. Might as well just _do it_ and save us both some time." And before Brad could utter a single syllable, she peeled the locker door off like the cover of a sardine tin, and flung it down the hallway. "Hey, I've already destroyed ninety percent of the school today. What's one more locker door?"

Brad was growing frustrated and afraid for her, all at the same time. Her entire body was bathed in an eerie pallor; the life and energy of the girl he knew as Jenny Wakeman, the girl next door, was nowhere to be seen in her face. Her eyes flickered like an old light bulb whose filament was about to short out. He was afraid to think such a thought, but he began to wonder if Jenny was hoping to get destroyed by the Cluster fleet. "Jen, you've got to stop _acting_ like this. You're starting to freak everyone out!"

"Robot girl freaks people out?" she groaned, as she pulled her knapsack from the remains of her locker. "Since when is that _news_? I've been freaking people out since the day I was turned on."

"Darn it, that's not what I mean!" grimaced Brad. "Come on, Jenny! Snap out of it! Would you get it into that hard head of yours that …"

She caught him off guard with a surprising barrage of repressed anger and bitterness. "No, why don't _you_ get it into _your_ head, Brad? I finally clued in – so now that makes _you_ the only person who doesn't get it. I'm a _machine_, Brad. I'm a _device_. I'm a contraption, a defense system … I'm a weapon. I'm a bucket of bolts that's been deluding herself into thinking she's a normal teenage girl. Well, guess what, Brad? I'm not a normal teenage girl. I'm a _robot_. I'm a robot, Brad, and an _obsolete_ one at that."

The color drained from Brad's face. "Jen, you … you can't really mean that …"

Instead of calming down, Jenny's rant escalated to higher degrees of bitterness and angst, and fresh sparks of electricity leapt from the tips of her pigtails. "Mom tells me at least three times a day – I was built for one purpose, to defend the planet Earth. Now I'm not powerful enough to do that anymore. I'm a machine that can't do the job it's supposed to do. And what happens to machines that can't do their job anymore? They get tossed away. They get hauled off to the junkyard."

Brad wasn't the type of guy who normally found himself speechless. But he couldn't speak now.

Jenny wallowed deeper into her murky swamp of despair as she rummaged in her backpack for her History notebook. "You and Tuck replaced your old video games. Your folks traded in your old Turbo Wagon. People get rid of their old laptops and stereos and television sets. Mom tossed away the old Quantum Gigulator, and after today, she'll do the same thing to me! I'll wind up collecting cobwebs in the basement next to my sisters, and in a few weeks XJ-10 will be zipping around saving the world, and nobody will even care that I was ever here. Why would they? After all … I'm just a stupid _machine_ …"

"… hey, wait a second. How did this get in here?" Jenny pulled a soggy, crumpled box out of the bottom of her backpack. It was wrapped up in a bright red ribbon. It looked like some sort – present.

* * *

A dozen upgraded roach-drones stood at rigid attention behind the main palace gates. Each one was a member of Vexus' elite Royal Guard: their green and gold chassis were polished to a jeweled finish, they received the best in care and maintenance, and they got free paint and wax jobs twice a month. They were symbols of the queen's power and splendor, and as such, they had to look good for the crowd of robotic citizens who came to admire them. They stood at vigilant alert, even though the only shooting they expected to see today was from tourists and their holographic cameras.

Then the lead drone noticed a change in the crowd's demeanor. The citizens were already buzzing with excitement from Vexus' stirring departure speech, and their celebration would grow larger still after her declaration of victory via hyperwave. But they seemed to be getting wound up a little earlier than expected. Hundreds of sensors turned towards someone in the back of the crowd …

A large figure strolled arrogantly forward, with a snarl on his face and a sneer in his eye. Robots pointed with excited recognition, and parted before the olive-and-green colossus as he strutted up to the main gate. The imposing robot acknowledged the crowd with a wave of his claw, and a flash of his wide, gap-toothed smile. Then he thrust his horn-antenna upwards, cutting an even _more_ daunting silhouette.

"Well, drone, are you going to stand there all day," he growled, "or are you going to _let me in_?"

The lead drone's neck servos whirred frantically with a double-take, stunned by who he saw standing before him. He clanked nervously up to the palace gates, fretfully rubbing his four claws together as he deactivated the electromagnetic locks. "Ah … of course, sir, of course … although … Sir, I don't understand … my programming instructs me that you were with the fleet, en route to …"

"Do I _look_ like I'm with the fleet?" boomed the mighty warrior, with menace in his eyes. He clenched a melodramatic fist to his chest, shamelessly playing to the crowd. "Now make way for the greatest warrior in all the Cluster Empire! Make way for the Lord of the Outer Rings, the Mayor of Moonrobia, the Capo of the Crab Nebula … the Destroyer of Worlds! Make way … for _Smytus_!"

* * *

Jenny ripped the box open, while arching a suspicious eyebrow at Brad with a tired _creak_. He insisted that he didn't know anything about the mystery gift – but Jenny rolled her eyes again, assuming that this was just another cornball stunt, to try and cheer her up. Knowing Brad, she had half expected the box to contain two tickets to a monster truck pull, or the latest version of "Space Godzilla Hunter 3000."

But instead, to her surprise, it held … _a necklace_.

A plain but elegant curved band, with a smooth steel surface infused by just a hint of aqua coloring that matched her own. In its center was a large blue oval … that wasn't actually a jewel, but a patch of polished metal that shone as brightly as any jewel. Jenny took the metal band in her hands, and turned it over to watch it glisten in the overhead lights. As much as she felt like making a snide remark in her current state of mind, she had to admit that it was … _pretty_. She glanced up with a sarcastic smirk. "Well, I wasn't expecting something like _this_. Uh … _wow_. Thanks. When Vexus whoops my butt this afternoon, at least I can … _heh-heh_ … be a well-dressed slave." A tiny part of her mind suddenly felt very confused. _I never expected Brad to give me something like jewelry …_

Brad was plenty confused himself – he'd never seen the weird "necklace" before in his life. But what he _did_ know was that Jenny had just come closer to _laughing_ than she had any time all day. For the time being, he decided to just roll with it. "Yeah, well … uh … I thought you might like it. I mean, you're always pressing your face against the windows of those _foo-foo_ stores at the mall …"

Jenny slipped the band around her neck, and looked into the mirror at the back of her locker. "Huh, it doesn't sit right. It's not curved the right way … I don't think it'll fit around my neck."

_Oh, great. Wouldn't you know, the one thing that has half a chance of cheering her up is busted._ Brad stopped wondering about the mystery present's origin, and gave it a closer examination … the curve of the metal wouldn't fit around any girl's neck, human or robotic. Then what could it be for … "Hey, wait a second! I don't think … I mean, that's not supposed to be a necklace."

Brad took the curved band from around Jenny's neck – then startled her by lifting it up, and setting it on top of her head like a tiara. It fit perfectly, actually securing itself in place with tiny hidden magnets. The metal band traced and arc from one pigtail-bolt to the other, dropping the strange blue oval to rest in the middle of Jenny's forehead, just above her eyes.

"There you go, Jen … fits like a glove." He gulped awkwardly. "Wow, it, uh … looks nice on you." The small burst of satisfaction Brad felt at correctly guessing the nature of the gift was abruptly pushed aside by a strange feeling of unease, standing so close to Jenny like this. He thought he felt a slight tingle of heat in his cheeks. _Now's not the time_, he thought, chastising himself.

Jenny looked at herself in the mirror again, and felt something rough and ragged surge upwards from her vocal processor … and to her amazement, it was an involuntary _giggle_. "Th-thanks," she stammered, still not sure what to make of the unexpected gift. It looked and felt as if it had been custom-made, created just for her. _Custom-made? That must have been expensive!_ "B-Brad, you didn't have to do this," she said, as the corner of her mouth creaked into the makings of a smile …

Suddenly, electronics embedded inside the headband came to life, and Jenny felt an odd, tingling sensation run through her surface wiring – the oddest sensation she'd ever experienced in her entire robot life. A wave of soft, pulsing energy washed over her frontal processing nodes; it felt strangely relaxing, yet rejuvenating at the same time, as if her mind was waking up for the first time that day. Teasing fingers of electricity danced through her neural nets, like a massage of bubbles. Jenny's eyes snapped open with the softest of _gasps_, and the bluish oval on the headband started to glow faintly. She dropped her textbooks and pencils, and stumbled clumsily backwards into her trashed locker. For she was overwhelmed by the wonderful buzz-tingle that rippled through her electronic mind …

Brad had no idea as to _what_ was happening, and with all the warnings that Mrs. Wakeman had given him about Jenny's deteriorating mental state, he feared for the worst. "Jen? Jen, what's wrong? Can you hear me?" That headband doohickey was doing something weird to Jenny's brain! Brad lunged forward to pull it off of her head …

And stepped right on top of one of the dropped pencils. He lost his balance and spilled into the lockers, crashing into the otherwise distracted robot girl. His arms shot out to support himself, just in time to keep from face-planting into the locker doors … but he nearly head-butted Jenny instead.

All of the sudden he felt something cool against his forehead … Jenny's metallic headband …

Jenny was vaguely aware that Brad's head had bashed into hers …

Then there was a blinding flash of light, and the lockers, the hallway, the entire school … disappeared.

* * *

Sheldon twisted the control sticks to make the Silver Shell – aka "Smytus" – wave to his adoring public one more time. Then he brought the synth-o-voice microphone down to his mouth, and spoke with a quivering, nasally voice. "Um, yes, thank you, thank you … now if you'll excuse me, I have pressing business inside the palace. Because that's where a loved and respected Cluster warrior like _me_ belongs on a day like today … uh … inside the palace … doing _palace_ stuff … Cluster warrior here …"

"For criminy's sake, Sheldon," hissed Drew's voice. He'd stretched a pencil-thin tendril of nanobots inside the Shell's chest, and morphed it into a silver-green speaker panel. "You look like Smytus, you sound like Smytus, now all you've got to do is _act_ like Smytus. He's got an ego the size of a small asteroid! Just blow off the guards, and strut into the palace like you own the place …"

"Okay, okay, stop making me nervous! "Smytus" breezed past the confused roach-drones, and started walking towards the palace doors …

"Commander, wait!" cried the lead drone guard. "You didn't scan in! It's standard procedure!"

_Scan in? Oh, just swell,_ gulped Sheldon. "Um … get out of my way, drone! I don't have time for this nonsense! I'm on an important mission for Queen Vexus. Do you want me to explain to her that I was late for my mission, all because of _you_?"

But the royal guard scurried in front of "Smytus", holding up a scanning device in his claws. "Commander, you know that we're under orders – directly from the Queen – to scan every single robot who comes into the palace. You do not wish to disobey a direct order issued by the queen, do you?"

"Ah … that is … " Sheldon clamped his hands over the microphone, dripping flop sweat onto the floor of the Shell's cockpit. "Drew, what am I supposed to do? What's he supposed to scan?"

"Ah … uh … _gaaah_ … I got no idea!" Sheldon could hear the flop sweat in Drew's voice, too.

"Oh _yeah_, this was a brilliant plan!" sneered Sheldon, in a mocking tone of voice. "Let's walk right in the front door! Right where all the guards are! Pure genius!"

"Would you shut up!" Drew hissed back. "Look, maybe I can fake something …"

But before Drew could do anything, the drone raised his scanning device to "Smytus'" right claw, and swiped a thin violet beam over the nanobot-disguised fingers. Drew and Sheldon could only sit in aching silence and ponder their fate. In a matter of seconds, they would be exposed as frauds – and ten thousand roach-drones would be on top of them like junkyard dogs on a T-Bone steak. No matter what the scanner had been looking for, Drew knew that they were _going_ to fail the security check.

As soon as the scan results came back over the ClusterNet.

* * *

Jenny floated through a rainbow-colored cloud of sparkling lights, and felt the tickling, caressing buzz-tingle flow away from her forehead, and spread throughout her entire face. Swirling vortices of ones and zeros danced around her body like a playful autumn breeze, then dove deep into the valleys of her electronic mind, and spread warmth through her innermost memory core. Her Mood-O-Tron bounced madly back and forth between Terror and Pleasure; for it felt absolutely magical, but she worried that it signaled the final breakdown of her robotic brain. But as glowing electronic snowflakes bounced off of her cheeks like dandelion seeds, she decided to simply close her eyes, and soar through the wispy colored clouds. If this was what a malfunction felt like, then she didn't want to be repaired. A silent squeal escaped from her lips, and her mind spun wonderfully out of control …

Muffled sounds coalesced into familiar voices, and streams of data flowed into a chaotic maelstrom of color and light. Then the surreal storm dissipated – and Jenny found herself floating in front of a strange portal, like a viewport into another universe. It was almost like watching a movie, except she could see, and hear, and even _feel_ everything that was happening … almost as if it was actually happening to _her_! And if that wasn't bizarre enough, in the middle of the floating portal, she saw … _herself,_ sulking on the edge of her bed

_Too weird_, she thought, still in a state of wondrous shock … but now she was too fascinated to be scared. Gradually she recognized other details in the picture. Boy band posters on the wall, trouble monitors hanging from the ceiling … sure enough, she was looking into her own bedroom, but from a strange and unfamiliar perspective. Almost as if she was outside the house, crawling in through the window …

"Hi, Jenny! My name's Brad!" said a friendly, excited voice. "_Wow_, a real live robot!"

The "Jenny" in the floating movie leapt to her feet with a grin on her face. "A real live teenager!"

A familiar conversation played out, as Jenny watched herself pointing and giggling, and suddenly she realized what she was looking at – it was the very first time that Brad had crawled through the window to see her! Back when her mother had kept her a virtual prisoner in her own house, and she wanted nothing more than to get out and hang with other teens, and have real friends of her own – then Brad had come into her life, and ever since, he'd been the best friend a robot girl could ever hope for. But she couldn't see Brad anywhere in the picture at all …

Then Brad's voice echoed from the portal once again – "Wow, I can't believe that grouchy old Doctor Wakeman has a super-cool daughter like Jenny! This is gonna be so awesome! She's fun, she's a superhero, and … _heh-heh_ … gee … she's kind of cute, too." Jenny's pigtails nearly shot off her head in surprise. _What was that? Brad never said that when we first met!_

Jenny slapped her hands over her mouth with a _gasp_. As amazing as it seemed – she was watching _Brad's own memory_ of their first meeting!

Then the picture dissolved into a floating swirl of color, before quickly re-forming into yet another one of Brad's memories. This time Jenny recognized the scene immediately … there she was, walking out of the garage just across from Mezmer's, with her shiny, glistening new red paint job. Twinkles of sunlight danced from the tips of her flame-painted pigtails, and the triple coating of wax made her chassis shine like it was made of rubies. Then to Jenny's bewilderment, she started feeling awkward, and nervous, and she could even _feel sweat_ trickling down her forehead and under her armpits … she was feeling everything that _Brad_ was feeling in this memory!

"Uh … Jenny … I don't know what to say," stammered Brad, as his throat shrank up and flashed bone-dry. "You look …"

"You look great, Jenny!" blurted Tuck, who was standing by Brad's feet.

"Stupid big-mouthed runt," Brad snarled to himself, feeling mad for being so clumsy with his words. "She doesn't look great. She looks … _amazing._ Yikes, Jenny … you look _beautiful_. Dangit, Brad, you idiot, why didn't you tell her that? What's the matter with you?"

Jenny felt a warm glow flash in her metal cheeks. _Gosh, I … I never knew he thought I was_ … She began to feel guilty, and wondered whether she had any right to be watching this. But she couldn't tear herself away from the floating portal, as more familiar memories flashed by in a blur. Brad and Jenny flirting at Mezmer's, when Jenny was wearing her exo-skin … Brad and Jenny alone in the alleyway, when she'd gone through her embarrassing robotic 'puberty' … then another image fazed into existence …

Brad was standing in the hallway right here at Tremorton High, talking to a cute blonde … Chloe, the girl who'd been flirting with him for over a month. And even though Chloe had warmed up to Jenny in the last few days, and had written a nice story about her in the school paper … to Jenny's surprise, she felt an unexpected emotion when she looked at the pretty freshman and her long, wavy hair. And it was one of her own emotions this time. It was _jealousy._

"Brad, I need to know _now_," pouted Chloe, looking up at Brad through her long eyelashes. "It's less than a week until Junior Prom, and if you're going to take me, I need time to start planning!" She twirled a lock of her wavy hair in her fingers, and rocked her shoulders back and forth seductively. Jenny shocked herself by grabbing a nearby block of glowing data, and crushing it into bits …

"Look, Chloe, you're a nice girl and all, but … I …" Brad stammered and stuttered, and his heart began to race, and it seemed like his brain was going to melt down and flow out of his ears. "Maybe you should just go to the prom with somebody else. I … I'm not even sure if I want to go …"

"Not even sure if you _want_ to go?" True to the saying, hell had no fury like a woman scorned. "What-ever, _loser_. Look, I don't know why I'm wasting my time with you, anyway. I can get a date for the prom like _that_. Brad, you used to be such a cool guy, but the more time you spend hanging around with Jenny, the more your brain turns to _mush_. While you figure out what you want, I'll be over at the basketball team practice. I'm pretty sure those boys are a little more interested in girls than _machines_."

Chloe stormed away, and Jenny fought the urge to blast the portal with a laser-limb … then the voice of Brad's memories echoed once more, shaking with nervousness and anxiety. "But Jenny's _not_ a machine! She's a girl who just – y'know – happens to be a robot. She's just an ordinary teenage girl. Well … gulp … no, that's not true. If you knew Jenny like I know her … you'd know that there's nothing ordinary about her at all. She's not a machine, she's my friend … the best friend I've ever had …"

A chill ran up Jenny's spine, and her cheeks flashed a brilliant indigo, as Brad's feelings poured out of the memory like a waterfall. "No, that's not true either," Brad groaned to himself, as he shuffled down the hallway, all alone. "You big dummy, Brad … you think of her as _more_ than just a best friend. But you'll never tell her, because you're too scared … you'll never tell her …"

A magnificent warmth flowed through Jenny's circuits as she hovered in the surreal kaleidoscope of color, unable to think, or move, or speak a single word …

Then the picture grew foggy, and dissolved into a swarm of fireflies that sped off into a billion directions at once. The warm eddies of data and memory receded, like a wave pulling away from the beach after high tide … then a glaring light washed away the remains of the dream world. Jenny blinked her eyes furiously as the hallway lights returned, and clasped a hand to the side of her head, feeling the soft electric hum of the metal headband. She was back in school, pressed up awkwardly against the shattered row of lockers in the corridor. Because Brad was practically laying right on top of her, with a look of stunned bewilderment on his face … and a faraway smile in his eyes.

* * *

Sheldon gnawed on his fingernails as he watched the royal drone-guards conversing, on the Shell's internal video monitors. This was it – they were _sunk_. Drew's plan was essentially a huge bluff; they had hoped that disguising the Silver Shell as Smytus would allow them to simply _stroll in_ the palace's front door. Well, they'd gotten inside the gate. And maybe another twenty feet beyond that. He saw the lead drone run out of the guard house, waving his claws excitedly, with a look on panic on his insectoid face. "Looks like he's pretty worked up about something," he whimpered …

"All right, better arm your weapons," gulped Drew's shaking voice. "Uh … we'll, uh … we'll blast these guards, then you hit the rockets and we'll try to make a break for it …"

A squad of royal drones rushed to surround "Smytus", and brought themselves to full alertness. Sheldon slipped the cover off the master weapons safety, wiped his hands on his pant legs, and brought a targeting reticle up on the Shell's center screen …

Then the lead drone snapped his smartest salute, with a look of terror in his eyes. "A thousand apologies, oh great Commander Smytus! Please, please, do not be angry with us! We were not aware of your secret assignment until we got the data back with the scan results! Please, understand … we were just doing our job! Don't destroy me … I have a wife and three appliances to feed!"

Sheldon arched a confused eyebrow. "Uh – _wha?_ Secret assignment?"

The lead drone guard clapped two of his claws together. "These drones will provide you with a royal escort on your way to the Central Communications Node. They'll get you there without further inconvenience. Once again, I am most sorry, Commander! Most, most sorry indeed!"

Sheldon wasn't quite sure what had just happened; the Cluster robots that should have been cutting him to ribbons, were marching ahead of him to open the palace's front doors instead. "I don't know what you did, Drew," he grinned, "but you must be better at this shape-shifting stuff than you thought!"

"It wasn't me," whispered Drew's voice, with barely contained excitement. "Think, Sheldon … not only does the Cluster computer network give us security clearance, but it arranges a guided tour through the palace, directly to the room where Ally is being held? I wouldn't even know how to set up something like that. But I know who could! Sheldon, I think we're getting some _inside help._"

* * *

Brad jumped back as if his shoes had just caught on fire, and slapped a hand to his forehead in panic. He looked as if he was having a sharp headache … but at the same time, his cheeks were burning with a crimson glow, and he was trying to wipe the world's biggest, dopiest grin from his face. "Whoa … uh … wow, that was _something else._" His eyes spun around in their sockets for a moment, until he managed to get his wits about him – and he saw that Jenny was staring at him with an expression to match his own. "Jenny," he blurted awkwardly, "what the heck _was_ that?"

Jenny gingerly touched the headband, and a nervous giggle escaped from her voice box. The darkness in her face had been washed away, replaced with a pale blue flash of girlish embarrassment. "I … I'm not sure," she said. "The headband did _something_ after you put it on my head, but … I'm not sure …"

He straightened out his shirt tails, suddenly finding the need to do something with his nervous hands, then started to scratch the back of his head. Jenny started to suspect that Brad had just experienced something as extraordinary as _she_ hid. She'd never known Brad to be this much at a loss for words before. Finally, clumsy words spilled out of his mouth. "Uh, Jen … um … this is gonna sound kinda _freaky_ … did you happen to see a bunch of … stuff … like, in your _head_ …"

"… you mean you saw them too?" she asked. "Like a whole bunch of images?"

He nodded an anxious _yes_. "What just happened?"

Jenny tucked one leg behind the other, suddenly unable to look Brad in the eyes. The blue color on her cheeks began to intensify, despite her best efforts to stop it. "This is … this is going to sound nuts, Brad … but … _gulp_ … I think we just _kissed_."

"_Kissed?_" Brad suddenly found himself breathing a little heavily. The idea seemed totally ridiculous, but the way it had felt … "Uh … not exactly the way I remember seeing it done in the movies."

Jenny clasped her hands behind her back, still unable to look her longtime friend in the eyes. Two minutes ago, she had been a walking harbinger of gloom … and now she couldn't wipe the silly smile off her face. "Brad, did you … did you really mean what you said … I mean, what you thought … when you said that I wasn't really a machine … did you really mean what you thought _after_ that?"

Brad tugged nervously at his collar. "Well, I … well, I guess that I …"

A loud _buzz-buzz-buzz_ rang through the hallway, and Jenny's chest plate sprang open with a quick _clank_, deploying her familiar emergency monitor. The picture sprang to life, and her mother's face appeared on the tube, clutching her hair in a fit of frenzy. "XJ-9! Where are you? For Euclid's sake, do you have any idea what time it is?" Mrs. Wakeman waved her wristwatch excitedly, and spoke with a hint of mania in her voice. "You must get to the Starship Camp as soon as possible! I have something important to show you, as soon as you get here. This is _extremely_ urgent – time is of the essence! It's a matter of life and death – specifically, yours! No time to chat, working like gangbusters, emergency project, get to the camp, everyone's waiting, _ta-ta,_ sweetie!"

And just as quickly as the monitor had unfolded, it snapped back into its compact form, and retracted into her chest. Jenny shrugged her shoulders, and gave Brad a smile. "That's my mom for you. What's a girl gonna do? Looks like I've got to fly." She stood up taller and straighter than she had all day, and deployed her booster wings and rocket motors. No diagnostic warnings were flashing in her internal vision. The Z-Pack felt lighter than it had before. The only sensor readings which were still above normal came from the temperature sensors in her cheeks. "I could give you a lift over, Brad," she said with a nervous chuckle, "if, umm … you're not worried that I'll screw up, that is …"

Before she could even finish the sentence, Brad eagerly hopped onto one of her booster-wings, mindful not to touch the foul Z-Pack he was so suspicious of … but he did rest a reassuring hand on her metal shoulder. "How many times do I have to say it? I'll _always_ believe in you, Jen."

Motors ignited, filling the hallway with billowing clouds of pale blue exhaust. She didn't even need to punch a hole in the ceiling; most of it was missing, anyway. With a blast of acceleration, Jenny and Brad screamed into the sky, and arced in the direction of the Starship Camp.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Fourteen / Ten Minutes to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	14. The Countdown Ends

A/N – Thanks for all the kind comments in the reviews for Chapter 13 – that was a toughie that I was both looking forward, and dreading, to write, because I worried about "pulling off" just the right mood for the scene. Just in case there was any lingering confusion about the headband; yes, Sheldon did invent a robot-human brain interface. The was the present he was going to give Jenny back in the cafeteria, before the "marshmallow disaster" messed things up. He snuck it into her backpack, where it sat, forgotten, until Jenny found it in Chapter 13 and assumed it was from Brad. Geez, tough luck Sheldon!

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Fourteen – The Countdown Ends

* * *

Sheldon wrapped his clammy hands around the Silver Shell's control sticks as tightly as he could; it was the only way he could manage to keep them from shaking. _Right. Left. Right. Left._ Even the simple act of walking suddenly felt unfamiliar. He rhythmically rocked the levers back and forth, focusing so hard on his gauges that he occasionally forgot to breathe. _Right. Left. Right. Left._ Cluster drones scampered past him in both directions; more emerged from a side tunnel, still more poured forth from a set of transport tubes. Large insectoid robots _clanked _past him, hulking military brutes that matched Smytus in size and girth. If any _one_ of them saw through the Silver Shell's disguise, he was a goner.

Drew concentrated with all the power in his nano-computers to keep the "Smytus" camouflage as flawless as possible. One nervous warble of silver-green, and they were toast. Thanks to Allison's unexpected help, he and Sheldon had pressed further into the palace than he would have thought possible; of course, that just meant they were deeper in danger with every mechanical footstep. The "honor guard" of roach-drones led them down an ornate hallway of gold and platinum bas-reliefs, then down another decorated with bronze statues – all of Queen Vexus, naturally. The corridor ended in a thick set of iron doors, upon which was engraved the Cluster coat of arms.

The lead drone-guard plugged his antenna into the security panel's scanning port, then bowed with an obsequious sweep of his claws. "The elevator on the far wall will take you to your destination, Oh Mighty Commander Smytus," said the drone.

"Uh … nicely done … um, keep up the good work, soldier!" Sheldon slammed his hands over the Shell's boom-microphone. "Should I give him a tip or something?" he whispered.

"_No_, you nimrod!" Drew's voice hissed with stressed-out disbelief. "_Geez!_ Just go, go, _go_!"

The iron doors _clanked_ open, and "Smytus" gingerly walked inside, into a high-ceilinged room that looked something like Mission Control for a old-time rocket launch. The walls were alive with viewscreens and maps, and the floor was covered with row upon row of computer terminals. Thousands of drones buzzed around the machinery, interfacing their circuits with the operations consoles. It was Military Command Headquarters, a master control room that coordinated all the fleets of the Cluster, from deep within the Iron Pyramid. And judging from the activity in the room, something very big was going on.

Sheldon lowered his viewing periscope and panned it in the direction of the nearest viewscreen. It showed a large number of angry red dots converging on tiny blue planet. A soft whistle escaped from his lips. "Oh boy, it's that big war fleet we saw taking off a few hours ago. They're just about to arrive at Earth! Gee, maybe we should we do something, Drew …"

"Like _what_?" Drew whispered back, with a touch of panic in his voice. "There's gotta be two thousand robots in here! Look, Sheldon, just get to the elevators before somebody recognizes us!"

Sheldon winced at _that_ happy possibility, and he put the Shell into a brisk walk across the crowded floor. The drones and officers who took notice of him gave a respectful nod, or even a brisk military salute … not knowing they were but a few feet away from a shivering human teenager. Sheldon turned the Shell's facial expression dial all the way to _Snarl_; hopefully, that would discourage anyone from starting a conversation. After a gut-churning stroll across the command room, which felt like figure skating through a minefield, "Smytus" finally reached the elevator for the Communications Node, and punched the button for the doors. A pair of maintenance bots gave the commander an odd stare, as he rocked back and forth uneasily, and whistled a nervous tune …

"Hold the elevator!" boomed a pair of deep, synthesized voices. Two giant beetle-robots rumbled up from behind, a red one and yellow one, just as the elevator doors hissed open with a cheerful _ping_. They barreled into the elevator capsule, bulldozing the disguised Silver Shell along as if he was an obstacle blocking their path. Then the doors slammed shut, and the red beetle-warrior turned his attention to a hand-held computer display, which showed the latest fleet deployment statistics …

Then he turned towards the Shell, and twitched an antenna. "Smytus? Smytus, is that you? I thought you were supposed to be out with the invasion fleet! Smytus, what in Cog's name are you doing here?"

* * *

Even from the clouds, it was obvious that the Starship Camp had stepped up to a higher level of alert. Firing teams rushed to prepare the anti-spaceship missiles that had been scavenged from the Cluster spacecraft carrier. Tanks rumbled into defensive positions, and laser artillery cannons pivoted their enormous barrels skyward. Squadrons of fighter-jets roared through the air along with the mighty SkyHawks of Sky Patrol. Jenny streaked past them all and banked into a turn, flying a circle around the starship that gave her and Brad a spectacular view of all the activity. Then she caught sight of a bright yellow lab coat amidst a sea of olive green, and pivoted her jets to come in for a smooth landing.

"No sonic booms, no impact craters … I'd call that a pretty sweet ride, Jen!" Brad slid off of Jenny's booster-wings and grinned at her through his messy mop of red hair. "Looks like you've got that Z-Pack pretty much under control!"

"Was there ever any doubt?" she grinned back, with a mischievous wink. Brad stifled the urge to groan out loud; for now, he chose to ignore the fact that she'd spent the past day moping around town like the spectre of death. The important thing for now was, the old Jenny was finally back. Although he was sure that they'd have something _interesting_ to talk about when this day was finally over …

"XJ-9, at last! Quickly dear, open your deuterium fuel cells and say _'aaah'_!" Mrs. Wakeman rushed over to her mechanical daughter, frantically waving a portable roboto-scope. "XJ-9, how do you feel? Have you experienced any further computer damage? Any more uncontrolled bursts of strength? Any coughing, sneezing, or leaky gaskets? Here, plug this into your belly-bolt so I can run a Level One systems test. Oh my, I hope I'm not too late …" Before Jenny could mutter a syllable, her mother stuck a thermometer in her mouth, pulled out a stethoscope, and pressed it up against the turbo-pumps in her chest.

Jenny spat the thermometer out and pushed her mother away. "_Thpppt!_ Mom, what's the deal? Okay, I _know_ I've been acting kind of freaky since yesterday, but I'm really feeling a lot better now."

"It's not _you_ I'm worried about," frowned the doctor, as she listened to the high-pitched whine of Jenny's turbines. She moved behind Jenny's back, and pressed the stethoscope up to the side of the Z-Pack. "Just as I feared," she sighed, shaking her head with annoyance. "Tucker! Tucker, bring me my emergency portable toolkit! Stat!"

Tuck came running from a small military tent, holding a red metallic container about the size of a lunch box. With an excited grin on his face, he set the box down on the ground, pressed a button on its side … and jumped back, as the "lunch box" unfolded and expanded into a fully equipped tool chest with dual oscilloscope screens. "Ready to operate!" he beamed, as he pulled on a pair of oversized rubber gloves. "Can I unscrew the top of Jenny's head? Please?"

"Whoa, time out! _Nobody's_ opening me up!" Jenny instinctively clasped her hands over her precious, un-opened head. "At least not until someone tells me what's going on!"

Mrs. Wakeman rummaged inside the tool chest, and pulled out a hydraulically-powered bolt driver. "It's the Z-Pack, dear. Oh, I should have suspected this from the beginning. The power surges and strange malfunctions you've been experiencing are _not_ due to your supposedly 'obsolete' circuitry. They've been caused by the Z-Pack all this time. It's even partly to blame for your erratic mood swings! Its power output is fluctuating dangerously, and it is growing worse with every passing minute!" With a few sharp blasts from her power bolt driver, the doctor opened up the housing of the bulky Z-Pack, and frantically began to tinker with the wires inside.

"I knew it!" shouted Brad, punching a fist into his hand. "I told you, Jenny! I _said_ you weren't obsolete!"

"B-but all of the tests showed it was working fine …" As much as Jenny wanted to believe her mother, she was still confused. "Mom, how did you figure all this out?"

Beaming with pride, Tuck held up a crumpled set of complex-looking schematics. "I told your mom about these blueprints that Brad and I found last night! See Brad, I _told_ you we should have just taken them over to Mrs. Wakeman!" He stuck his tongue out at his older brother to make his point.

"_Found_ them?" growled a furious voice. "You _stole_ them!"

Phinneas Mogg stormed in their direction, grinding his teeth behind his wiry, ragged beard. His academic lackey, Professor Plink, fell into step behind him, and a pair of burly military policemen flanked him on either side, with humorless scowls on their chiseled faces. Towering over all of them was the granite-faced glare of General Brohammer, who looked very mindful of the fact that an alien invasion was due in just a few minutes. Mogg pointed an accusatory finger at Mrs. Wakeman, and snapped his fingers at the MP's. "There's your evidence, gentlemen. They've been caught red-handed! I've been looking for those stolen blueprints since those _pizzas_ were delivered last night! Those are _my_ property, and they are Top Secret! I want Wakeman and her little collaborators arrested at once!"

* * *

"Smytus" drummed his claws together anxiously. Sheldon was trying to think of something to squeak into his sweat-covered microphone; he could see both beetle-warriors staring at him with suspicious looks on their harsh faces. Suddenly the elevator capsule felt very, _very_ small. "Ahh … well see, the thing is … I was _supposed_ to be with the fleet, but then this really, really important thing came up …"

"More important than commanding a _warship_?" asked the yellow warrior.

"Ah … yes … ah …" Sheldon started to gnaw on his fingernails again … "teeth! Yes, that's it! I forgot I had a dentist's appointment this morning. Heh, heh … look at this big ol' gap in my choppers. You could kick a field goal through them! Now _tell_ me that's not more important than invading Earth …"

"Oh, brother," groaned Drew … "Wait! Secret mission! Sheldon, quick, tell them it's a secret mission!"

"Smytus" folded his arms, and sneered at the two perplexed warriors with a sudden resurgence of bluster. "Insolent fools! I am on a _top secret mission_ from the queen! That _totally_ has nothing to do with dental appointments! So just turn yourself around, and mind your own _beeswax!_"

"All right, all _right_," sighed the red beetle-warrior. Smytus had a reputation as an egomaniacal blowhard, but apparently he was a weirdo, too. The warrior robot tapped a few keys on his hand-held computer, and returned to his strategic maps as the elevator capsule silently glided upwards …

Then his computer's display flashed the message _Incoming Hyperwave Message_ … and one second later, a scowling, _familiar_ face appeared on the screen.

Sheldon's jaw dropped open, and if Drew had currently been showing a face, his would have, too.

"This is Commander Smytus, with the Earth Invasion Task Force in hyperspace," snarled the horn-headed, bombastic Cluster warrior. "Strategus-82, you worthless grease-leaking piston pusher, you're late! You should have checked in from the Central Communications Node five minutes ago. In case you haven't heard, we've got this little _invasion_ thing going on today!"

"A thousand apologies, Commander," said the red beetle-warrior, "I'll be there in just a few …"

Then both beetle-robots did a quick double-take, and slowly turned back to face the phony Smytus … with murderous looks in their beady eyes.

"N-n-now, I know what you're thinking," babbled "Smytus", "y-y-you're wondering how that imposter managed to sneak on board the Earth Invasion Task Force!" That explanation, sadly, did _not_ appear to satisfy the two vicious Cluster warriors. Huge jagged spikes deployed from the ends of their claws, and extra robotic arms deployed, brandishing electroshock weapons that glowed a sickly pale yellow. There wasn't much room in the elevator capsule, and "Smytus" quickly found himself clumsily backing into a corner, with no chance of escape …

A silver-green fountain of nano-goo lunged out of "Smytus'" chest, and morphed an anvil-sized fist that landed squarely on the red beetle-warrior's jaw. The unexpected blow spun him around and crashed his face into the opposite wall, but his combat algorithms kicked into gear, and he landed an electroshock jolt into the middle of the shimmering ooze. The blast launched Drew into the ceiling, peeling his liquid body away from the Silver Shell, who was now exposed for both Cluster warriors to see. The yellow beetle-warrior deployed a massive battle-axe from his left arm, and swung it at the Shell's stunned face …

The girlish squeal of terror may not have been appropriate for a robotic hero, but now adrenaline-soaked fear had Sheldon working his control-sticks with a spectacular frenzy. The Silver Shell ducked the attack, and deployed a spray nozzle from the tip of his finger. Sticky oil sprayed into the yellow beetle-warrior's eyes, blinding the robot's optics, and leaving him unprepared for a mighty left hook to the midsection. Then the Shell was suddenly grabbed from behind by the red Cluster warrior – before he was grabbed himself, by coils of silver-green sludge that dropped from the ceiling.

The elevator capsule rocked back and forth from the thunderous impacts of robotic bodies against the walls. Sheldon braced his feet against his consoles, and struggled to work the Shell's defensive controls. Ribbons of silver-green crisscrossed and wrapped around the yellow warrior's massive forearm. Warrior-beetle shells sprouted new hatches, deploying plasma weaponry that whined to life. A punch was landed to an insectoid face with a muffled grunt. A silver-green blade ripped through a leg, filling the car with a spray of hydraulic fluid. A laser beam sliced through the air like a ruby sword. A sonic cannon sang out with a deafening roar, and took out the overhead lights. And the elevator kept climbing, indifferent to the blind struggle of the four mighty robots within it, grappling in the dark.

* * *

Mogg couldn't hold back his satisfied smirk, as the military police moved towards Mrs. Wakeman and the boys. Poor Tuck shivered with abject terror; his fertile imagination conjured up visions of breaking rocks in prison for the rest of his life. Brad gave the MP's an innocent shrug, but they didn't seem to buy his explanation that the whole thing had been a harmless prank. Jenny's metal cheeks burned with anger; this was such a stupid thing to worry about, just minutes before a Cluster invasion …

But then Mrs. Wakeman marched towards Mogg and Plink with righteous indignation, waving her power driver and shaking her fist. Jenny had never seen her mother so angry before; she could practically see jets of steam shooting out of her ears. "Arrest me? You simple-minded charlatan, if anyone here should be placed under arrest, it should be _you_! For scientific quackery! And criminal endangerment! And … and … and for being a loathsome, contemptible guttersnipe!"

The doctor turned to General Brohammer to plead her case. "General, regardless of how I came to be in possession of these blueprints, it's a good thing for all of us that I had a chance to inspect them. There is a _serious_ design flaw in the Zero Point Energy couplers! I've made an adjustment that should keep the reactor from going critical, but I have no idea how long the repair will last …"

"Wha … oh, that's utter nonsense, Nora! Don't blame my invention for your robot's shortcomings! Here, I'll prove that there's nothing wrong!" Mogg saw that Tuck was holding the "borrowed" handheld Z-Scanner; he snatched it back from him, and gave it a quick wave over the Z-Pack. Once again, the Z-Scanner responded with a row of chirping green lights. "You see? Everything's _fine_."

"Oh, _really_." Mrs. Wakeman snatched the Z-Scanner back from Mogg, and snapped the cover off the back. The insides of the scanner, where one might expect to find densely packed, high-tech electronics, instead contained nothing … but _a brick._

"Heh, heh … now, how did that get in there?" A drop of sweat trickled down Dr. Mogg's face.

"You never let _anyone_ check on the Z-Pack but yourself … and now we know why. Because your safety equipment is _rigged_!" She threw her power driver to the ground in frustration. "Phinneas, Mortimer, don't you realize the dangers of what you've done here? You've committed a serious breach of scientific ethics. You could have jeopardized XJ-9's very _life_!"

"N-n-now Nora, we're scientists," Mogg babbled nervously. "We deal in risks with every project we undertake. And I think we would both agree that the _minor_ chance of a _small_ malfunction is an acceptable risk, if my invention can save the world!"

"Bwa-haw, _mm-hey_, it's simple risk assessment, Nora!" Dr. Plink thrust his shoulders forward, and pushed his glasses back on his nose. "Besides, Phinneas told me there's only a 19.3 percent chance that the Z-Pack will … _glah_ … explode in a blistering atomic fireball of death and destruction … with the burning, and the radiation, and the mutant sewer people who eat the brains … _nnn-hey_!"

"WHAT! You … you … knew all along, didn't you, Phinneas? You knew this device was faulty all along! Why … why you … _ooooh_ …" Mrs. Wakeman's hair seemed to crackle like a snow white bonfire, and her teeth ground together like tectonic plates. "Phinneas Mogg, it is only my professionalism as a respected member of the international scientific community that provides me with the restraint necessary to keep from … oh, the heck with it!"

And to everyone's amazement, Nora Wakeman balled her bony hand into a compact fist … and plowed it into Phinneas Mogg's stunned face!

Mogg spilled onto the ground and lost his glasses; when his wits finally returned to him, he leapt to his feet, his face beet-red with fury. "General Brohammer, did you see what that needle-nosed thug just _did_ to me! This is an _outrage_! I insist you do something, right this instant! I demand _action_!"

The general tilted his head as if in thought, and gave Mrs. Wakeman the subtlest suggestion of a smile. "Very well, then … I'll have Dr. Wakeman brought on as an instructor, for the Army boxing team." His eyes shifted to Mogg's stunned face, and took on a nastier tone. "Now as for you, Dr. Mogg, Dr. Plink … the United States military does not look kindly upon _research fraud_. Gentlemen … please escort the doctors to the brig."

And as the MP's dragged the scheming scientists away, Jenny rushed forward and wrapped her arms around her mother in a rib-crushing hug. "Mom! That was _totally awesome_! Wow, Mom, I never thought you had it in you!"

"Um, heh-heh, yes, well …" Mrs. Wakeman rubbed her swollen knuckles, with a flustered look on her face. "He had it coming! Nobody uses _my daughter_ as a guinea pig for dangerous, radical scientific experimentation! … Except for me." Then she placed a motherly hand on Jenny's shoulder, with a look of deep concern in her eyes. "XJ-9, the Z-Pack truly _is_ dangerous. Just consider everything you've been put through over the past two days. If the boys helped, I could have it uninstalled in a jiffy …"

Jenny gave the idea serious thought; she wanted nothing more than to get the horrible contraption off of her back. "Mom, you said you managed to fix the energy coupler thingamabobs, right?"

"Well, yes, but it's only a temporary patch …"

Jenny planted her fists on her hips, striking a heroic pose. "I need the extra energy from the Z-Pack if I'm going to beat Vexus and her big war fleet. Leave it on, and monitor me by remote control. Hopefully I can drive them off, before I explode into a zillion subatomic pieces."

"I won't leave the monitor for a second," said Mrs. Wakeman. She had never felt more proud of her daughter than she did at that moment. "But do remember one thing …"

"Yes, Mom?"

"The 'X' in "XJ-9" does not stand for expendable," smiled the doctor. "Make sure you come back, dear."

Jenny simply smiled back in response, then took a few steps backward, as metal hinges groaned and rotated along her slender back. Powerful turbines whined up to speed, and sleekly curved metal panels unfolded from their storage compartment, extending outwards into a pair of forward-swept wings. Powerful booster engines locked into position, their exhaust ports glowing with the ignition sequence for the fusion engines. With a blast of exhaust, Jenny streaked into the clouds, leaving those behind her in a gust of gale-force wind. Mrs. Wakeman, Brad, and Tuck watched her as long as they could, shielding their eyes until she shrank to a mere speck of light in the sky.

* * *

Under the watchful eye of the roach-drones, the engineering droid rolled from one supercomputer to the next, taking readings with a diagnostic tool. A smug smile came to his face; all systems were running with perfect efficiency, the way they always did here in the Central Communications Node. From this room, every citizen of the Cluster was watched over, for the duration of their life, by the perfect efficiency of the Quantum Computer Core. Satisfied with his diagnostic readings, the droid rolled over to his monitoring station to record the latest numbers into the daily log …

The elevator doors exploded across the room with a horrific sound. Foul smoke billowed out from the capsule, setting off shrill alarms that shattered the hypnotic hum of machinery. The engineering droids switched into emergency mode; their programming compelled them to protect the Core at all costs. Panels cracked open in their narrow torsos to deploy fire extinguisher nozzles, and they rushed towards the smoking elevator car …

The first two engineering droids didn't even react as a silver-green hammer swung out of the smoke and took their metallic heads off. Drew sent another pair of droids clattering across the floor before the roach-drones snapped into combat mode, and charged him with their electroshock weapons. The first drone lunged through the air to jab its stunner into Drew's back … but then the Silver Shell emerged from the smoking elevator, and plucked the startled robot from mid-air with a giant clamp.

The chaos that erupted in the Communications Node was brief but intense. The engineer-droids were not combat-equipped, and were quickly reduced to mashed wads of scrap metal. Sixteen roach-drones were stationed inside the room; the two invaders divided them up between then. Drew launched himself into a blur of silver-green fury, sprouting a quartet of swords from his back that shredded through roach-drones like a wheat thresher. The Silver Shell relied on his robotic brawn, along with a well-placed missile and a blast of cherry soda that shorted out another two drones in a fountain of sparks. A swipe from his sawblade attachment sliced the final roach-drone in half, and he tossed its remains into the elevator capsule, on top of the charred leftovers of the warrior-beetles. Then the Shell disabled the elevator's electronics, and welded the doors shut with an acetylene torch.

"That's the last of those mechanical miscreants," he grinned, as he dusted off his hands – then a disturbing thought came to him. "Uh, it does beg the question of how we're gonna get out of here."

"Yeah, I'm kinda still working on that part," fretted Drew, as he rammed a silver-green spike into the annoying fire alarm. "The important thing is, it keeps everyone else _out_ until we're done." It could only be a matter of time until palace security realized that the Communications Node had been breached. He spun around on his heels, wildly looking in every direction. Where was she? _Where was she?_

The Central Communications Node was filled with the flickering green glow of data monitors, but the dominant light came from a giant globe, suspended from the ceiling by magnetic fields. Mesmerizing patterns of glowing purple dots floated inside, like a swarm of stars in a miniature galaxy. The purple globe must have been important, because all of the twisting cables in the room seemed to ultimately flow in its direction. Drew shook it off; it wasn't important now. On the curved wall in front of him, a holographic display showed all the data traffic flowing through the ClusterNet. A wide semi-circle of monitoring workstations sat in front of the hologram, and in front of the workstations were bulky, metallic chairs that could more accurately be described as couches. Drew rushed forward and looked into the first chair; it contained a squat, faceless, tan-colored robot, who amazingly seemed to be totally oblivious to Drew's presence. The second chair contained a bulb-headed cylinder …

"Over here," said Sheldon, in an ashen tone. The Silver Shell was parked next to one of the metal couches, with its chest hatch opened, so Drew could see the sad look on Sheldon's face …

He sprinted over to the couch with a horrible feeling inside …

It felt like the floor was going to drop out from under his feet. "Oh, Ally … aw, _geez_."

Allison sat motionless in her heavy metal couch, secured by iron restraints that clamped onto her shoulders and hips. Dozens of cables ran out of her torso and legs like a mess of gray spaghetti, slithering over the floor to plug into yet more equipment. Her forearms had split open like clamshells, deploying special data connectors that she'd used in her normal duties; but now they stretched out to plug into data ports on the console in front of her. Two twisted cables climbed up from the back of her couch like a pair of vipers, and plugged directly into exposed sockets on the back of her restrained head. Drew lifted a shaking hand, and rested it against her dull, gray cheek; Allison didn't twitch so much as a servo in response, but simply stared straight ahead, with an empty, soulless expression on her face. No stars and planets danced in her crimson eyes; she had completely merged with the machinery of the ClusterNet.

Drew wanted to scream, to shout, to punch his fist through a wall … but he knew that none of that would help Allison in the slightest. He slid a hand down to her arm, raging with pain and guilt, but felt no comforting electric tingle to alleviate his grief. He'd flown five thousand light-years, stormed an evil queen's palace, and now was standing right next to the girl of his dreams … and she still felt as far away as the other side of the universe. His hands started to shake, and he looked into her vacant eyes once more. _Just look at what you've done to her, you worthless pile of sludge …_

"All right," he said, drawing himself together with renewed purpose and intensity. "Sheldon, remember the anti-virus software I asked you to make? Now we see if you're as good as I _hope_ you are." Drew's hand slid down to the end of Allison's arm-housing … and his fingers flowed into long, silver-green wires, coiling themselves around the exposed Cluster wiring …

"Hold up, Drew … I figured you were going to try something like this." To Drew's surprise, Sheldon unreeled a connector cable from the Silver Shell's chest. "Plug this little baby into the back of your head, and I can go into the ClusterNet with you to help out. It'll be just like logging on to World of Warquest! Heh, heh … and you're looking at the guy who made Level Sixty sorcerer in three hours!"

Drew took the end of the connector in his hand, thought about it for a second … and a warm grin broke out on his face. "I guess two is better than one, right? Aw, who am I kidding, I need all the help I can get. But make sure to keep your eyes open for the bad guys out here in the real world, too. I'm probably going to be pretty _zonked out_ once I get myself plugged in."

A connecting socket morphed into existence at the base of Drew's silvery head, and the cable from the Silver Shell slid into place with an easy _click_. Sheldon cracked his knuckles with a bit of fanfare, then clattered his fingers over his keyboards, like a pimply maestro conducting a symphony of software. Drew finished flowing his nanobots around Allison's exposed data connectors, and felt his adaptive algorithms start to evolve, deciphering their way through the outer layers of the Cluster firewall …

He took one last look into her lifeless eyes. "Hang on, Ally," he gently whispered. "Please, just hang on." Then the room around him vanished into a brilliant whitewash …

And he felt himself falling. Falling into a bottomless, multicolored abyss. Into the ClusterNet.

* * *

The last wisps of atmosphere fell behind her, and soon Jenny was accelerating through the vacuum of space. She sped past a scattering of Earth space cruisers that had been assembled as a last-ditch defensive line. Other weapons and spacecraft available, including those which were salvaged from the Cluster spacecraft carrier, but the widely-known, unspoken, nasty little secret was: everyone knew it was all up to Jenny. The army knew, Skyway Patrol knew, and Jenny knew herself. So many of the world's space defenses had been sabotaged by the Omni-droid that there were only enough vessels left to defend low Earth orbit. The best strategy for Earth was to stop the Cluster out in deep space, before they got their giant ships close enough to bombard cities and send down landing craft. And right now, Earth had exactly _one_ deep-space defense weapon. And she had blue pigtails.

Her mother's voice crackled over her internal radio. "XJ-9, do you read, over? My wristwatch says two fifty-nine. Do you see anything yet?"

"Not yet," she answered, as she rocketed past a row of geostationary satellites. She had to admit, she was getting a phenomenal burst of power from the Z-Pack now. And thanks to her mother's repair job, the reactor was integrating smoothly with her own power circuits. But she still detected power spikes coming from the Z-Pack … and her internal temperature sensors were starting to creep upwards. The only question was whether or not she could defeat the Cluster before she turned into a robotic volcano. She pushed the uncomfortable thought away, and continued outwards, past the orbit of the moon …

Everything was cold and empty around her. _According to Allison's message, this was supposed to be the place._ There was nothing out here but stars …

Then more stars burst into existence, blossoming into rainbow-colored vortices that stuck out against the blackness of space like a field of flowers. There were dozens of vortices. Then dozens grew into hundreds. Then hundreds grew into thousands. _They're almost pretty_, thought Jenny, as she watched countless holes forming in the fabric of space-time …

Then the hideous war machines poured out of hyperspace, ugly, rust-red, and olive-green. Gigantic, dome-backed Cluster starships, bristling with lasers and missiles and filled to overflowing with millions of drone troops. Jenny could only float and watch as the horde of enormous ships kept coming, and coming, almost as if space itself were giving birth to and endless stream of monster insects. The swarm of starships grew, and grew, and it seemed as if their numbers would blot out the stars. Jenny's eyes flitted left and right, and a horrible feeling started to brew in her wires …

Something wasn't right. There were too many of them.

She converted her pigtails into a pair of radar dishes, and swept the rapidly growing formation. A screen deployed from her forearm to display the count … three thousand … thirty-two hundred … thirty-six hundred … and still more ships poured from the portals, without any signs of slowing down. "Come on, already," she said, with a sense of disbelief. "Did they actually leave any ships back on Cluster, for cryin' out loud?" Four thousand … _five_ thousand …

Then the hyperspace portals closed up, and their riot of colors faded into the starry background. Jenny took a second to absorb the staggering scale of the fleet that had just assembled in front of her.

A fleet that was twice the size she was expecting.

She reverted her pigtails to flight mode, and deployed a pair of massive phased ion cannons from each elbow. She watched the giant warships in front of her open their hatches, and spew clouds of fighters into space like killer bees streaming from bloated hives. Whatever fear or doubt she felt was bundled up into a scrap file, and moved to the recycle bin. This was her moment. This was the reason she'd been built. Cluster Dawn had finally come. She let out a warrior yell, punched her afterburners, and launched herself into the tempest with hellfire blazing from the barrels of her cannons.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Fifteen

* * *


	15. Cluster Reloaded

A/N – First, a few quick answers: a couple of you wondered how Vexus got that many warships. The way I figure it, Vexus rules over an interstellar robot empire. She has the full resources of _hundreds_ of planets at her disposal. Of course, six thousand ships is _still_ a lot of ships … consider that there were thousands of ships in the D-Day landings back in WW2. Granted, those boats weren't a mile long each. Vehrec – nice catch with that reference from BFW. It was meant to give an idea of the scope of Vexus' mad dream of galactic empire – remember, a galaxy is a _very_ big thing, boys and girls. But I think it's unlikely that any aliens are going to ride to the rescue in this story. As for your other questions … those were very good questions (grin).

Fair warning, this is a super long chapter here. Sorry, but it's necessary for plot reasons. Okay, grab a soda, get comfortable, here we go …

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Fifteen – Cluster Reloaded

* * *

Waves of vertigo flowed through his circuitry as he plunged into the abyss, fighting off attack subroutines that raced towards him like balls of flaming plasma. Bolts of lightning lanced out at him as the ClusterNet attempted to defend itself from the unauthorized access. But Drew's cyber-immunity was up to the challenge, and he bulldozed a path through the first wall of energy, then another, and another, as his self-evolving algorithms worked their way through the layers of the Cluster firewall. The falling sensation flipped sideways, then upside-down, then disappeared completely as he rushed face-first towards a brilliant pinprick of color. Then the color exploded in a virtual Big Bang, and a strange new cosmos erupted into existence around him, filled with branching microcircuits and network pathways that stretched off into infinity. Drew's digital essence began to coalesce into his familiar android body, though his zigzagging stripes now glowed with an eerie, ghostly green.

Another burst of light erupted next to him – and a microsecond later, there stood a virtual version of the Silver Shell, who had followed Drew in through the holes in the firewalls. The Shell was bathed in a glowing white aura that gave him a spectral appearance as well; even his chest-spiral faintly glowed with an otherworldly white. "Whoa, cool beans!" he said, taking his first look at the cyber-universe. "Pretty good graphics, intuitive interface … this place could really use a soundtrack, though."

Drew waved his glowing fingers in front of his eyes and frowned. "Man, no matter how many times I wind up in cyberspace, I _never_ get used to it." They were standing on a floating platform in a kind of virtual Grand Central Station, a large spherical room with tunnels running off in every direction. Packets of data screamed in a billion directions, like a hurricane of tiny comets. With a shimmer of light, Drew's hand morphed into a connection jack, and plugged into a query terminal on the platform. "All right, we'd better start looking … no telling how much time we have until trouble comes. One of these network connections _has_ to lead to Ally's mind."

"Consider it found," said the Silver Shell, cracking his knuckles with theatrical flair. His chest swung open, and out came a long sliding drawer, filled with hundreds of file folders – folders from the Shell's hard drive, which held Sheldon's latest and greatest homemade hacking software. He rummaged through the messy files, looking for _just_ the right program. "Bunker buster … naw. Open Sesame … naw. I know I have a super cool search engine in here somewhere … a-ha! Here it is … Uber Spider!"

He pulled out a small glowing cube, sending stray files flying from his messy drawer like scrap paper, and tapped a button on its side. The tiny cube sent out a scanning beam which spun around in a full circle, and projected a holographic map of the ClusterNet into the air. "All right, we're here … let's see, this tunnel leads to the Mainframes, this one to the Backup System, here's the Hive Mind Nexus …"

"Hive Mind Nexus? Wow," said Drew, as he gathered up the scraps of virtual paper and text files. "Any chance you can send a little cyber-stink-bomb into one of _those_ tunnels?"

"Not a chance," said the Shell, shaking his head. "It's got super-high security – triple-quantum encrypted. Without the passwords, it would take, umm … 384.9 trillion years to crack the code."

"_Uh_ … yeah, we don't really have _that_ kind of time. Any luck finding … _hey_, what the …" – Drew took a second glance at the text file in his hand, which was titled _Ode to Jenny_. "I love you Jenny, with your pigtails so blue … I'd do anything, just to get snuggly with you … what the _heck_ is this?"

The Shell snatched the file and rammed it back into his chest. "Hey! That's my _love poem_ for Jenny! I was working on it, back in the Stealth Wasp …" – Drew groaned and rolled his eyes, which only made the Shell even more upset – "oh _sure_, it's silly when we're talking about _my_ romantic needs!"

"All right, all right, _focus_, dude," grumbled Drew. "Map. Tunnel. Which?"

"Okay, okay," pouted the Shell, turning back to the hologram. "It looks like we take this pathway to her cerebral interface using Tunnel CJ-588, and right on into her brain via her input ports. Wow, there's an awful lot of data flowing through there right now. I mean, it's getting close to _overload_."

"I noticed," said Drew, with worry in his voice. "I'm eavesdropping on some of the data flying around in here … I think the Cluster fleet just arrived at Earth." Drew and the Shell exchanged a look of concern; they realized that at this very moment, five thousand light-years away, their home was in grave danger, as was their good friend whose job it was to defend that home. _Good luck, Jenny …_

Six tunnel doors flew open without warning, and a horde of hideous insects poured out, like a demonic swarm of giant hornets. The ClusterNet was unleashing its next round of defenses on them – autonomous search-and-destroy programs. Fifteen cyber-hornets dove at the intruders, kamikaze-style, forcing them to drop to their stomachs to dodge the attack. Suddenly Drew felt a stab of searing pain, as if he was being injected with burning poison; one of the hornets had jammed a stinger into his shoulder, and was pumping a nasty virus into his algorithms …

But his green stripes shimmered wildly, and sent a pulse of newly-evolved software flowing back into the hornet, exploding it into a cloud of yellow polygons. He grimaced and told the Shell that he was all right, but it was the first time he could ever remember feeling pain in cyberspace. More attack programs surged into the switching station; it was time for them to get the heck out of there. Drew and the Shell leapt from the floating platform, and hovered in mid-air, their bodies glowing with crackling, colored auras. Then they rocketed into the network like electrical impulses, weaving through the dense traffic of data packets and Cluster commands. They plunged into Tunnel CJ-588, hurling glowing data-grenades over their shoulders at the killer swarm of cyber-hornets that was hot on their tail.

* * *

Titanium-alloy blades ripped through a maze of pipes, spinning at such insane speed that they appeared to blur into a monster drilling bit. Steam and plasma burst into slick clouds of hot, sticky vapor that erupted into an inferno all around the attacker, as she pressed onwards towards the guts of the ship. The blades gouged out a tunnel with terrifying speed, chewing through steel bulkheads as if they were made of wet cardboard, before emerging into the starship's reactor room. Last-ditch laser fire did nothing to slow the attacker down. The coolant lines shrieked and gave way, and the revolving blades continued through the opposite wall, shredding their way back out into space with the ease of a fish swimming downstream. A pale blue blur arced away from the wounded Cluster starship moments before a spectacular explosion snapped the mammoth vessel in two like a mile-long graham cracker. The spinning blades finally slowed down to a speed that the human eye could perceive …

To reveal an _extremely_ dizzy teenage robot girl. Jenny retracted her titanium blades into her elbows and clutched at her forehead, as she watched the first Cluster warship balloon into a maelstrom of fire. _Ohhhhh … I'm think I'm gonna barf. Great, only five thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine to go._ She really had to pick up the pace here. The Z-Pack whined with a surge of zero point energy, boosting the thrust in her pigtail-jets by two thousand percent.

_Speed and agility._ Those were the keys. It was Jenny's unique combination of speed, agility, toughness and firepower that made her the most formidable robot warrior in the world. She could buzz around the Cluster starships like a fighter jet circling a formation of blimps. Of course, _these_ blimps were armed with phased proton cannons that could punch a hole through the moon.

Lasers sliced through space all around her. Missiles curled towards her on white-hot plumes of fusion. Plasma launchers hurled hissing blobs of green energy. _Gotta keep moving._ Her legs converted into a pair of antimatter cannons, and unloaded a series of blasts into a grouping of four Cluster destroyers. Their cannons fell silent, as massive explosions belched forth from their ruptured hulls. Particle beams screeched at her from the next wave of warships. The teenage superhero dove towards the newly formed debris field, and an extra pair of arms deployed from her back. As easily as if she were picking apples from a tree, she grabbed four pieces of twisted hull plating – each larger than a train car – and her afterburners ignited, accelerating her into a spectacular loop-de-loop. When she leveled out on a collision course for the next wave of starships, she was traveling at over fifty miles a second. With a flick of her wrists, she sent the hull wreckage hurtling towards their targets, and veered away at the last second. At fifty miles a second, the wreckage ripped into the Cluster ships with the force of a hydrogen bomb.

_I'll show 'em who's obsolete_, she said to herself, as she dodged a salvo of heat-seeking missiles. Another blast of laser fire flew from her palms and tore into the back of a lumbering warship. So many targets, so many threats flying at her all at once, like riding in a clothes dryer filled with hand grenades … she had to focus with all the power in her computer mind to keep everything straight …

She had to focus _so hard_, that she didn't hear the buzzing of her belly-bolt. Her chest-plate split open and deployed her trouble monitor, which glowed to life with the image of her mother. "XJ-9, I have an update from Deep Space Radar! It appears the Cluster fleet is even _larger_ than we expected!"

A microwave blast crackled to her left, missing by mere feet. Another missile screamed towards her – which she _caught_, and hurled back at the ship that launched it. "Yeah … _kind_ of noticed that," she groaned, as she deployed a long set of razor-sharp claws from each hand. "Listen, Mom, don't take this the wrong way …" – she dodged another plasma blast – "… but I'm _little_ busy right now …"

"Oh, so I see," gulped Mrs. Wakeman, as she saw a rainbow of energy beams crisscrossing through the heavens behind her daughter. "I'll make this quick then. XJ-9, you must attack the ships as _fast_ as you possibly can. According to my calculations …"

Jenny swooped underneath the belly of another Cluster warship, and plunged her claws into its thick metal hull while cannon fire raged all around her. "Mom, I _think_ I know how to blow up a spaceship, _thank you_!" She huffed into her monitor as her claws opened up the warship like a gutted fish, leaving a dual trail of sparks and explosions in her wake.

The doctor ground her teeth together. "Young lady, if you would just _listen_ for one second! I'm not sure that you fully appreciate the gravity of the situation! This is very important …"

Suddenly Brad's face popped into the middle of the monitor, rudely shoving Mrs. Wakeman aside. "Jenny! We can see all the explosions from down here! It's _wicked awesome_! Hey, the Channel Four camera crew is here and they wanna know if you can make a _really_ big explosion for the five o'clock news …"

Then Brad was pushed back, and Tuck's face popped up with a big grin. "… hey, are you talking to Jenny? Hi Jenny! Hey, can you see our house from up there?"

Mrs. Wakeman finally regained control of her monitor, shoving the boys aside despite their protests. Jenny spiraled away from the warship and retracted her claws, scowling at her nervously chuckling mother as the starship billowed into a fountain of flames behind her. "Oh yeah, I can see that this is a _really_ important call, Mom. Look, I've really got to go …"

Her mother recovered from her little embarrassment, and held a clipboard of numbers and diagrams in front of the monitor. "Yes, XJ-9, you most certainly _do_. As I was _saying_, according to my calculations, since the Cluster fleet is so large, there's a danger that they might actually reach Earth _even_ if you operate at perfect efficiency! You need to concentrate on slowing them down. Fire at their engines!"

Jenny flinched as a crimson beam of free electrons nearly carved off her pigtails. She made a quick U-turn to get behind four Cluster destroyers, and delivered a particle beam salvo right into their exhaust nozzles. "Oh, _I_ get it … stop them first, then come back and finish them off later …" – a pair of rockets exploded fifty yards away, slamming a shock wave into her stomach like a blitzing linebacker. The universe spun in half a dozen sickening circles, until she managed to bring herself back to a steady hover. "_Wow_, that was a close one," she coughed, brushing flecks of scorched carbon off her arms. "Mom, I really have to let you go now … I can barely keep up with all these ships out here!"

But to her surprise, she didn't see her mother's face in her monitor any more. There was only hissing static. Jenny swerved left and right around a column of glowing tracer shells, dodging a hailstorm of laser cannon fire that seemed to double in intensity every few seconds. She unleashed another barrage of particle beams into a giant spacecraft carrier, and slapped the side of her monitor to get the picture back. "Mom? Mom, what happened? Is everything all right?"

A cool, evil voice purred out of the monitor. "Oh, everything is wonderful, Jennifer … just _wonderful_. However, I imagine that things look rather different from _your_ perspective."

Jenny gasped as the static cleared, revealing the arrogant sneer of Queen Vexus on her monitor. "Vexus? How did you … oh, great, now I need to change my phone number. Look I'll save you some time, okay? I've told you once, and I'll tell you again, I'm _not_ going to join the Cluster …"

"Who says I _want_ you to join?" smirked Vexus. She paused a moment to enjoy the surprise on the robot girl's face. "Oh, Jenny, I've given you so many chances to join the Cluster in a peaceful fashion. I've been more than patient while I waited for you to come to your senses. I gave you the chance to rule over this pitiful planet at my side, like a queen. And every single time, you _rejected_ me."

Suddenly Jenny was blinded by countless beams of brilliant light converging on her at once. Dozens of high-powered laser cannons from multiple ships locked onto her simultaneously, and bombarded her with wire-frying energy that made her metal skin simmer and smoke like a barbequed steak. She cracked open her wrists and deployed a reflector shield, trying to buy herself some time to recover from the attack. And _still_ Vexus was on her monitor, smiling a nasty smile.

"And rejecting me was a very _foolish_ thing to do," she said, drumming her spidery fingers together. "So there will be _no_ invitations this time. No, this time … this time I simply destroy you."

Jenny looked up at the convoy of warships that stretched off as far as her sensors could see. Even with all the chaos she had caused, even with all the Cluster ships she had turned into tumbling fire boats, most of Vexus' invasion fleet remained intact. Then her eyes grew wide as she saw one colossal warship dip out of formation and plunge towards her. It was huge. Impossibly huge. It was a flying city, armed with enough weaponry to destroy the planet Earth all by itself. Bursts of light danced along its fuselage as its hundreds of cannons barked to life at once. Bolts of phased electrons leapt from its bow cannons like giant forks of lightning. Dozens of smoke trails sprang forth from its myriad missile batteries. And hordes of Cluster strike fighters streamed out of its dozens of hangar bays, followed by waves of rocket-powered drone warriors bent on her destruction.

"Thought you might enjoy seeing my flagship," smiled Vexus. "It's a big hit with the folks back home on Cluster. Try not to scratch the paint when you blow up, will you? There's a good girl."

* * *

Drew grit his teeth and clutched onto the data packet with the tenacity of a bulldog, while sprouting a set of glowing tentacles that wrapped around the Silver Shell's enormous chest. This let the Shell concentrate on blasting the cyber-hornets behind them, while they surfed at breakneck speed through the twists and turns of the network connection. The Shell was firing dozens of fuzzy, glowing globes – Sheldon's best Neutralizer program – that disintegrated the monster insects on contact. But still the hornets drew closer, and closer, with dangerous viral code dripping from their digital stingers …

And suddenly they fell through a portal at the end of the tunnel, and spilled into a huge, new virtual room in the vast cyber-universe. Drew tumbled through space like a man falling off a ladder, before gracelessly plowing into the floor with a dull _splat_. A split-second later, the Silver Shell collapsed on top of him like a sack of potatoes. Drew blinked and shook his head, completely disoriented; he'd traveled from one surreal cyber-wonderland into another, and it felt like the laws of physics were re-inventing themselves every ten seconds. Where the heck was he now? He was surrounded by a complex three-dimension maze of circuits, all bathed in an ugly blood-red glow; large purple orbs hung in mid-air like planets in space, pulsing with activity as ClusterNet data flowed into them like seething rivers of lava. All the circuits seemed to feed towards the center of the room, where he could see …

His jaw dropped open. _Oh my gosh_ …

Where he could see a large glowing web of circuitry, coiling around the arms and legs of a ghostly solitary figure … who was encased in a milky white sphere of energy …

A lavender robot girl … with long, flowing hair-foil, and warm, dark eyes …

And when those warm dark eyes caught sight of him, they nearly leapt from Allison's face. She started to shout his name … but as her mouth opened, her squeal of glee morphed into a shriek of pain. She twitched furiously in her circuit-bonds as raging streams of Cluster data poured into her processors, driving her CPU's far past their safe operating temperature. She braced herself in her glowing manacles, turned her head towards Drew, and managed to silently mouth a single word … _Help._

An order from the gods could not have spurred him to move any faster. Drew leapt to his feet, and pulled the Silver Shell upright, almost vibrating with excitement. "We're _here!_ _She's_ here! Sheldon, we _did _it! We're inside Ally's electronic brain! Hurry up, start spreading that anti-virus software around! I've got to get her out of that torture rack …"

A terrible, familiar buzzing sound ripped through the air, and a swarm of vicious cyber-hornets screamed into Allison's mind through one of her ClusterNet connections. Drew remembered what their lethal virus code had felt like when he'd been stung; but he had the advantage of his unique software to protect him. If any of those foul monsters pumped their poison virus into Ally's mind … "We've _got_ to stop these things! Will the anti-virus work on them, too?"

"Only one way to find out," said the Silver Shell, with a swaggering smile. His right arm morphed into large blaster cannon. Striking a heroic pose, he started launching globes of shimmering white light all around him – spreading the anti-virus code on the crimson circuit-walls, and on the dive-bombing cyber-hornets, too. Back in the real world, Sheldon danced his fingers across his keyboard like a concert pianist, while he mashed the buttons on a Gamestation controller with reflexes forged from years of video games. From his vantage point, he was simply playing the ultimate first-person shooter game.

But it all felt _much_ more real to Drew. As deeply integrated as his computer mind was right now, he was probably fighting for his own life, along with Allison's. The first giant cyber-hornet dove at his chest, and twisted its ugly body to wield its stinger at him. Drew stared down his attacker … and jumped into the air, flipping onto the stunned hornet's back. He morphed a hand around it neck and pulled up hard, forcing the virtual insect into a steep climb. Then he stretched his other arm into a digital sword, and steered the reluctant insect towards another wave of attacking hornets. Ferocious swings from his arm-sword sliced the attackers in half, and they disintegrated into clouds of ones and zeroes.

Allison strained against the withering assault on her processors, watching with fascination as the epic battle raged inside her mind. The mighty robot commando with the spiral on his chest was blowing away cyber-hornets by the dozens, all while spraying a layer of soothing software over her tired, enslaved microchips; amazingly, it was pushing back the Cluster infection, and the grip it held on her brain. And as for Drew … she watched, transfixed, as he fought the hornets like a robot possessed. He charged headlong into the evil horde, shredding anything that was unlucky enough to get near him. To her horror, she saw one of the hornets manage to sting him in the back; but a roundhouse comeback punch sent it hurtling through space, to crash right into the energy-sphere. A bolt of energy incinerated it into digital ash.

Now Drew was wrestling with the last cyber-hornet, which was proving to be _much_ harder to destroy. He wrapped his arms around its thorax, throwing it off balance, and the two robots swerved wildly through the three-dimensional grid of circuitry. The hornet was trying to twist its stinger into its target, and Drew was trying to slice off its wings. Neither one of them realized that they'd curled towards the middle of the room, and were now plunging _directly_ towards Allison. She screamed out a warning, but they hurtled directly into the shimmering surface of the energy-sphere … which spat out crackling bolts of energy to fry the wailing cyber-hornet into a spectacular puff of bits and bytes …

But to her astonishment, Drew fell right _through_ the energy wall, completely unharmed!

And suddenly he was floating with her _inside_ of the sphere, just inches in front of her face … with a fantastic, stunned smile on his face.

They simply stared into each other's eyes for a moment, not sure if they should dare believe that the moment was really happening. Allison felt a warm glow spread through her wiring, and stared helplessly into the deep, dark eyes that smiled at her through the messy mop of silver-green hair. She'd been certain that she would never get to melt into those eyes again. Drew was stricken completely immobile; he couldn't flex a millimeter as he fell into her bottomless pools of mystery, mesmerized by the reflection of the universe that danced in her warm, glistening eyes. It hadn't been that long ago that he'd thought she was dead. Neither one of them spoke a word. Words didn't exist to describe the moment …

"Hi," stammered Drew, with a boyish grin.

"_Hi_," she replied, in a dreamlike voice.

Drew shook his mind clear, and frowned angrily at the thick web of circuits that wrapped around Allison's arms and legs. His arms stretched out, and he wrapped his fingers around the ugly, rust-colored bonds. A pulse of anti-virus software ran from his fingers, into the crimson web of circuitry … and in a shimmering wave, their dull red color was replaced with a luminescent violet. The anti-virus began to spread, surging outwards from the energy sphere, and into Allison's higher brain functions. Then the circuit-webs twisted and withered like dying vines, and shrank away from her arms. They unplugged themselves from her head and torso. Then her legs were loosened, and she was finally _free_, free from her shackles, free from her mind-prison for the first time five days …

And in her exhausted condition, she fell forward, right into Drew's waiting arms. He held onto her like a cracked eggshell. "Ally! Ally, are you all right? Are you hurt?"

She saw the worry on his face, and erased it with a smile that glowed like the noonday sun. "_Just_ … give me a few microseconds to cool my processors, and I'll be as good as new." She raised a quivering hand to his cheek, filled with a genuine sense of awe. "Drew … you … you came back for me …"

He slid a hand up, and entwined his fingers with hers. "I h-had to, Allison … I had to c-come back …" – he gulped nervously – "… for the missing half of my soul."

Five days of grief disappeared in an instant, and Allison's face beamed with impossible joy. She flung her arms around his neck with newfound vigor, still wonderfully lost in a mix of bliss and disbelief, feeling like her head was going to dissolve into a wisp of vapor and drift away into the stars. Drew pulled her into his chest with a crushing embrace and heaved a deep sigh of relief and happiness, wishing he could freeze this moment in time and never let go of her again. He ran his fingers through her flowing hair-foil, caressing her head as she rested it against his shoulder. Even the cyber-universe around them seemed to be rejoicing, as brilliant waves of soft lavender washed away the stains of Cluster red from Allison's mind. She coiled her arms around his green-striped chest, then pulled back to stare into the incredibly cute eyes that she wanted to lose herself in for the rest of the day …

Then she blinked a few times, as an urgent thought snapped her from her trance.

"_Jenny!_" she shouted. "Omigosh … Drew! Jenny's in _trouble!_"

* * *

_Omigosh_, she thought, _I'm in trouble._

Jenny spiraled away from Vexus' flagship with desperate speed, twisting and weaving through columns of scorching laser energy that threatened to overload her optic sensors. She had tried to charge the queen's giant warship, but she hadn't even gotten close to it. Its weapons had driven her off, and now she was flying for her robotic life. Subjecting herself to accelerations that would kill any human, she curled into an impossibly tight turn, frantically trying to outrun the sixty proton missiles that howled through space in pursuit of her. She wasn't having any luck shaking them. And even as strong as the advanced metal in her body was, she didn't think she could survive a blast from sixty missiles …

Transforming as fast as she could, her leg housings unfolded and extended into a pair of giant fusion rocket motors, and she ducked behind the bulk of another lumbering Cluster battle cruiser. Then she drove her fingers into the warship's hull, and her rockets burst to life like a pair of miniature suns. The Z-Pack's circuits glowed with a surge of energy, like a boost of robotic adrenaline … and to the stunned surprise of the cruiser's drone crew, their million-ton ship suddenly pivoted sharply to the left. Jenny literally _swung_ the giant ship at the proton missiles like a mile-long paddle. Fierce explosions rippled across the side of the cruiser, and it burst into a cloud of white-hot debris … showering still more warships with lethal hits from spinning chunks of wreckage. A spectacular chain reaction took out dozens of warships, like a traffic accident on some outer space highway.

But it was still a only a tiny fraction of the overall fleet. _So many of them,_ she grimaced, clutching a hand to a laser burn. _So many …_

A huge drone warrior slammed into her back with a rocket-propelled tackle, and wrapped its claw-tipped arms around her body in a robotic bear hug. His metallic mandibles clicked menacingly, and a drill-tipped tendril sprang out of his mouth. It whined up to speed, and tried to penetrate the back of her head … but Jenny flung her arms out in a burst of super-strength, and sent the drone warrior tumbling out of control, and into the windshield of a passing cruiser. More drone warriors came at her, brandishing blades and drills and lasers and blasters. Laser cannons continued to scream across the stars in her direction, making it dangerous to float in one spot for more than a few seconds. More missiles leapt from the launch tubes of the next wave of warships. Screeching green bolts flew from a wave of high-speed Wasp interceptors that curled towards her in attack formation.

Another blast of energy from the Z-Pack roared through her circuits, thundering through her wires like an electric earthquake, and she let out a sensor-piercing banzai scream. She flew at the Wasps like a shot from a rifle barrel, and deployed ion disruptor cannons from her arms and legs. As howling waves of charged ions ripped the Wasps to pieces, one voice repeated itself over and over in her electronic mind – the annoyingly smug chortling of Dr. Mogg. _She's not powerful enough,_ he'd said, after writing down his big stupid equation. _It's just a matter of numbers. She's not powerful enough to stop the Cluster._

She balled her fists in determination, and curled into another high-speed turn, charging head-on towards a long column of giant Cluster destroyers. _Time to break out the big guns_, she growled.

And Jenny's robotic body underwent another stunning transformation – she _split herself in half_ at the waist. A brilliant blue column of energy shrieked into existence, connecting the bottom of her torso to the top of her hips. She flung herself at the oncoming massive ships, seemingly on a rocket-powered collision course. Then she pulled her upper body away from her legs, and the column of crackling blue energy quickly grew and grew – until her two halves were over a _mile_ apart from each other. The burning column of energy sliced into the first destroyer with the ease of a hot knife cutting through soft cheese. In seconds, she had flown through its entire length, and the giant destroyer simply split in half like a hot dog bun. Jenny pressed onward, slicing her beam-weapon through the entire column of warships; giant rocket nozzles shattered, engine rooms exploded, thousands of drones were cast adrift into space. With terrifying speed, the teenage superhero carved five percent of the Cluster fleet into tumbling flotsam.

But now the Earth was closer than ever. The titanic battle had started out at the orbit of the moon. Half of that distance had been crossed, and only minutes remained until Vexus started sending down landing parties to enslave the human race. _More time._ She needed more time. But there was no more time. Her lower body returned to her, and she locked her two halves back together again.

_I've only stopped a few hundred ships, maybe a thousand,_ she frowned. _And a lot of them are just blowing right by me to get to Earth. Vexus is sacrificing part of her fleet to keep me busy … I gotta head them off, no matter what it takes …_

Fire screamed through her circuits, and her servos shook with uncontrollable spasms. _Yeeeeowtch! What happened?_ Had she been hit? _Was it a laser or a missile or a … oh, no._ A cold, horrible feeling kicked Jenny in the stomach. Warning messages were flashing in her computer vision. But they weren't damage alarms … they were failure messages. Failure messages from the _Z-Pack_.

Her mother's repair job was starting to come undone. The Z-Pack was growing unstable, and it was starting to generate dangerous power spikes. And its temperature was climbing. In a _hurry_.

Six squadrons of Wasp interceptors opened fire with their spread-spectrum lasers, and unleashed nine waves of hunter-killer missiles at her. One hundred and seventy-two fully-armed drone warriors screamed towards her on the flames of their fusion motors. Giant deck turrets on eleven Cluster battle cruisers pivoted in unison to lock on to her, and their barrels burst to life, spewing out a torrent of crackling particle beams. Jenny shook her head and cleared the messages from her vision, telling her systems to ignore the high temperature warnings. _Can't take any time to rest_, she winced, as her voltage regulators sent out yet more power spike warnings. _The Earth is counting on me. I've got to beat Vexus. Got to show everyone that I'm not obsolete._ Her booster-wings snapped out sharply, and her engines re-ignited with a white-hot scream. Jenny plunged back towards the front of the Cluster armada, ignoring the fresh warning messages in her vision display … and the faint whining sound coming from the Z-Pack.

* * *

The Silver Shell bounded across the virtual expanse of Allison's mind, nearly tripping over a stray circuit-path on the way. He rushed up to the energy-sphere with a frantic look in his eyes. "Jenny's in trouble? Jenny's in _trouble_? What do you mean, Jenny's in _trouble_? Oh… wait a second, I don't think we've been properly introduced." The Shell gave Allison a quick bow, and clutched his fist over his chest in a melodramatic salute. "Fear not, good citizen, for I have come to do battle against the forces of evil and injustice! I am … the Silver Shell! There … that's better. Now, then." Then he slapped his hands to the sides of his metallic face. "What do you mean, my Jenny-Wenny is in _trouble_?"

Allison arched a perplexed eyebrow at Drew, who just shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Believe it or not, he's _helping_ me," he groaned. "I'll explain it all later. What do you mean about Jenny being in trouble? Isn't she beating the stuffing out of Vexus and her little war fleet?"

"Vexus' fleet isn't so _little_," explained Allison. "The queen changed her battle plans after she found out about that secret message I sent to you guys. She didn't take three thousand ships with her – she took _six_ thousand." She gestured to the crisscrossing network paths that fed out of her mind, and hooked into the infinite recesses of the ClusterNet. "I'm still wired into all of military communications channels, and I've been eavesdropping on their reports. Jenny's fighting as hard as she can, but she's losing, Drew. She's in danger. Your whole planet's in danger!"

"I'll tell you who else is in danger," said Drew, grabbing her by the arm. "_Us!_ Ally, we've got to get your body disconnected from all of this junk, and get out of the palace before more drone goons show up. All right, Double-S, let's see if we can spread this anti-virus to her motor controls!"

The Shell cocked the safety on his arm-cannon, and Drew leapt out of the energy-sphere, once more passing through the barrier without causing so much as a ripple. "Ally, you stay in there where it's safe, in case more of those freaky cyber-bugs show up!"

"No way!" she shouted back, more than a tad annoyed. "I've been cooped up in here for almost a _week_! I'm helping you guys whether you like it or not." She jumped out of the milky-white sphere of energy that had protected her from Vexus' attacks …

But instead of passing smoothly through it, the crackling energy clung to the surface of her virtual body, shrinking to fit over her form like a sheet of plastic. Drew and the Shell stared, slack-jawed, watching the pulsing patterns of glowing energy wrap themselves around Allison's arms and torso. New layers of software hummed into existence from the bottoms of her feet to the tip of her antenna, running with shimmering, zigzagging patterns – patterns that looked just like the stripes on Drew's body, but which shone with an electric purple instead of a pale green. Allison gasped in wonder and turned her hands over in front of her face, trying to make sense of her virtual self's amazing transformation.

The Silver Shell took a cautious step forward, and examined the new shimmering stripes that covered Allison's forearm like a coat of armor. "It's anti-virus software," he said, with genuine surprise. "And it's much more advanced than stuff I whipped up. If I didn't know better, I'd say this stuff is self-evolving … just like the software in _your_ body, Drew."

"How the heck is that even possible?" shouted Drew, flinging his arms in bewilderment. "That big glowy sphere thing was in Ally's mind long before we got here! Where did it come from?"

"I don't know for certain," said Allison, as she curiously traced the new purple stripes on her virtual arm. "It was just here when I woke up. Wow, it feels … _weird_ … kind of _tingly_!" Then she folded her arms across her chest, with a look of steely purpose in her eyes. "But that's not important right now. We've got to do something to help Jenny, and stop Vexus from invading your home planet."

"How are we supposed to do that? Everything's happening five thousand light-years away."

"Maybe so," she said, with a scheming grin, "but, no matter how far the Cluster spreads, every part of it still connects right back to here – the Queen's Palace. That's how Vexus controls her soldiers and keeps watch over all the robots in her empire … everyone is hooked up to the ClusterNet, one way or another, just like a big nervous system. And right now, we're right in the _middle_ of the ClusterNet! We've got a direct connection right into the heart of it, as long as my real body stays hooked up into that couch. Drew, I know _all the access codes,_ and now I've got my free will back! We can … well, I don't know, maybe we can sabotage the computers, or send some phony commands to the army … maybe we could even shut the whole network down!"

Drew swallowed hard, unable to hide the worry in his voice. "Ally, you don't have to do this," he said, unable to hide the worry in his voice. "You've already been through so much …"

"That's NOTHING compared to what she's GOING to go through," boomed an echoing, godlike voice.

The Silver Shell squealed in terror like a schoolgirl; Drew and Allison jumped into each other's arms, staring upwards to locate the source of the ominous voice, only to see … fountains of red polygons rushing into Allison's mind, gushing through her ClusterNet input ports as if a dam had broken. Huge, churning clouds of dark red facets swirled into a screeching cyclone. Deafening cracks of thunder reverberated from one side of the universe to the other … then faded away into deep, arrogant peals of laughter. The teenage robots fought back waves of fear; it felt like a virtual apocalypse was unfolding before them. A whirlwind descended from the crimson thundercloud, and the jagged graphic fragments began to meld together into a stunning, towering figure …

A svelte, wasp-like robot … that stood twenty times taller than the rest of them.

"Did you REALLY think it was going to be that easy?" snarled the gigantic form of Queen Vexus, as the blood-red storm clouds spread out to reclaim Allison's mind.

* * *

Sheldon stared dumbly into the Shell's on-board computer screen, trying to make sense of the burst of code which had just blown through his firewalls. This new super-powerful Cluster program had seemed to come out of everywhere at once, and now it had both Drew and Allison's minds trapped inside of the ClusterNet. He took a quick swig of cherry soda for a sugar boost, and adjusted his headset microphone. "Oh, wow, talk about your big boss fights! Where the heck did she come from?"

"You're asking me?" Drew's frenzied voice shouted back, through the wall-mounted speakers. "That's Vexus! Oh, fer criminy's sake … it's Queen Freakin' Vexus! How in the world can she be here? She's on her big honkin' flagship, flying towards Earth! What's going on here?"

Sheldon pushed a greasy strand of hair out of his eyes, and started madly typing on two keyboards at once, desperately trying to find some answers. "I … I don't know yet. I mean, it looks like Vexus … and the voice match routines say that it's Vexus …"

On the monitor that displayed the virtual world, Drew and Ally dove for cover as a crackling lightning bolt shrieked down from the storm clouds and nearly fried them. "Dude, she's trying to re-assimilate Allison's mind! We've got big problems in here!"

Suddenly a loud, metallic _clang_ broke the silence in the Central Communications Node.

Sheldon leaned out of the Silver Shell's chest, looking past the motionless husks of Drew and Allison's bodies, towards the thick metal doors of the elevator shaft. _Clang._ A small bulge formed in one of the doors. _Clang._ Another one formed, slightly cracking the weld that sealed the doors shut. _Clang._ The tiny crack grew a little bit wider … just enough for the tips of a metallic claw to force their way through.

"We've got big problems out here too," he gulped.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Sixteen

* * *


	16. Reach Out and Touch Someone

A/N – A quick science note before we start. Kar – thermodynamics doesn't quite work like that. In real life, cooling a spaceship or a satellite is a major concern, because there are limits to how fast something will cool off, even in space. The space shuttle has huge radiator panels on its doors that it has to deploy within nine hours of getting into orbit, or else. Remember, space is a vacuum, and a vacuum is the ultimate insulator. That's why there's a vacuum between the walls of a thermos. Okay, Mr. Wizard time is over. Here comes chapter sixteen!

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Sixteen – Reach Out and Touch Someone

* * *

Jenny punched through the swirling clouds of combustion, accelerating to a mind-numbing speed to get back to the main body of the Cluster fleet. It was bad enough that there were still _thousands_ of giant warships left; but to make things worse, the Cluster was using their superior numbers so darned _efficiently_. Vexus realized that Jenny was going to destroy a good part of her fleet no matter _what_ she did; so she coordinated the movements of every starship, fighter, and drone to minimize her losses. If that meant sacrificing fifty warships in a feinting maneuver, then that's what she did. Every move the fleet made was the result of a cold, inhuman calculation. And it was _working_. 

She swooped down towards a heavy cruiser, jinking wildly to avoid a hail of fire from its laser cannons. Roaring low over the bridge, she snapped off half a dozen giant antennas with her powerful hands. Then Jenny's robotic body underwent another amazing transformation, and she turned herself into a gigantic crossbow. The antennas, each longer than a jumbo jet, made for _very_ formidable arrows. With a rapid-fire series of shots, they all found targets in the gaping engine nozzles of yet more Cluster warships, which erupted into fountains of gaudy white-hot flame.

With a blast of her afterburners, she streaked past her latest targets, racing to get to the very front of the Cluster fleet. If she could create some havoc, she might be able to slow things down and gain some time. But then her sensors detected even _more_ inbound missiles, coming from directly in front of her. Which was odd, because the only thing in front of her was the shiny blue Earth …

_Whoops_ … and fingers of white exhaust racing towards her, like a thousand cosmic javelins. The Earth's military had fired off a massive salvo of ground-to-space missiles, which were streaking into space at terrific speed. Their nose sensors scanned for targets – and a few of them locked onto _Jenny herself_. Her eyes grew to the size of volleyballs, and she swerved into a U-turn. "Hey, watch what you're shooting at!" she yelled over the Earth defense frequency. "I'm on _your_ side, remember?"

She raced back towards the Cluster fleet, with ground-to-space missiles screaming up fast from behind, and interceptor missiles pouring forth from the warships in front of her. Hundreds of explosions bloomed all around her, and suddenly she was caught in a dizzying crossfire, with missiles and rockets screeching past her in both directions. It was like the grand finale on the Fourth of July, times a _million_. Proton explosions rippled through space, then finally trailed off …

To reveal that the Cluster fleet hadn't slowed down one bit. Missiles, it seemed, were a lot easier to shoot down than a wild-flying robot girl.

The drones re-focused on Jenny with a fresh wave of attacks, swooping down upon her from six different directions at once. As Jenny dodged to evade one attack, she flew right into the path of another. _I bet Vexus is getting a real kick out of this_, she growled to herself. With a quick snap of her elbows, she deployed a pair of chain guns, and – _snap – snitzt – snackt_ – shuddered like an electroshock patient. More power spikes from the Z-Pack. They were getting worse – the gauges were creeping into the danger zone. Maybe a few minutes left before … _Can't worry about that now. Can't let anyone down. Can't let Mom down. Can't let Brad down_ … she let out a yell, and plunged back into battle with fury blazing from the barrel of her guns.

* * *

Blasts of lightning rained down like an artillery barrage, narrowly missing the scrambling robots as they searched for cover on the surreal landscape of Allison's mind. Hovering orbs and geometric solids offered little in the way of shelter on the infinite sprawl of grids and networks. Cluster assimilation software crept across the virtual sky like a crimson fog. Another globe of energy screamed through the air and missed Drew's cheek by mere inches; the force of the resulting blast ricocheted him off a thick bundle of circuit-paths. "Gasp … gasp … quick, over _there!_" he shouted, rubbing the back of his throbbing head. It was just a squat orange cylinder that looked like it might provide a few seconds of refuge. Drew scooped his arm around Allison's waist and jumped for cover as another bolt of energy crashed down behind them. Seconds later, the Silver Shell dove next to them, wailing like an air raid siren. 

Monstrous footsteps thundered relentlessly towards the little hiding spot. Drew and Allison exchanged a frazzled look, then they peeked over the top of the orange cylinder, craning their necks upwards to stare at their attacker in stunned silence. Queen Vexus towered over them like an angry colossus, sneering down with evil smoldering in her eyes – and a blood-red aura of energy flowing from her clawed hand like a supernatural flame.

The robot queen chuckled wickedly, enjoying the look of bewilderment on Drew's face. "Surprised to see me here, Andrew? You sneak back onto my planet, you break into my _palace_, you plug yourself into _my computers_, and you're _actually_ surprised to see me here? Not too swift, are you, son? This is the _ClusterNet_, you small-minded weakling! This is the Great Network that connects me to every computer mind throughout my empire! I not only command it … I am _one_ with it. I am _more_ than capable of guiding my drones to victory from the bridge of my flagship, while a piece of my superior robotic mind deals with an annoying little insect like _you_. You see, I do not simply _rule over_ the Cluster." Her voice deepened, reverberating from the heavens like a force of nature, and the orb above her head glowed with the brilliance of a sun. "I _AM_ THE CLUSTER."

Drew's jaw nearly fell off of his face. "Holy … _schnikey_," he gulped, completely in awe of the immense figure before him. "We are _so_ toast."

"Even now, my War Fleet is overwhelming our mutual friend Jennifer. So with all due respect … if I can handle the mighty XJ-9, then I shouldn't have too much trouble with _you three_." A sphere of energy manifested in her crooked hand, and she launched it into the orange cylinder like a mortar shell.

Allison grit her teeth in pain, and slapped her hand to her forehead. "_Yeeeeowch_ … ow, I think this thing we're hiding behind is one of my memory banks! _Ohhh_ … all of the sudden I can't remember my locker combination …"

Drew suddenly realized that they weren't hiding behind some imaginary computer graphic. Any damage that Vexus did in this cyber-world might cause real damage to Allison's circuits! "Aw, nuts to this," he growled, trying to muster up his last remnants of courage. He grabbed Allison by her shoulders, looking earnestly into her face with pained eyes. "I am _so sorry_ for getting you into this mess, Ally. And I am _so sorry_ for screwing up when you needed me the most. If this doesn't work, then … then only I hope you can forgive me somehow."

And before Allison could ask just what the blazes _that_ had meant, Drew leapt out from behind their hiding spot, and stretched his green phosphorescent body into a stream of shimmering software. The giant Vexus hurled more energy-missiles at him, but his body zigzagged between the blasts, and rocketed towards the queen's feet with reckless abandon. His hands transformed into a pair of glowing energy-blades, and he plunged them into Vexus' leg. The queen let loose with an otherworldly howl of pain. Encouraged by the successful attack, the Silver Shell scrambled out into the open and added his arm-cannon to the assault. Vexus winced as the Shell's anti-virus splattered into her massive chest-plate. It appeared the evil robot queen wasn't invincible after all …

But then a strobe of light raced through Vexus' circuits, washing away the anti-virus code. Powerful beams of energy leapt from her twisted fingertips and slammed into her attackers, viciously shaking them like rag dolls. Blinding sparks crackled over their bodies like a blizzard of firecrackers, and the teen nano-droid screamed with agony unlike anything he'd ever felt before. "So that was your best shot, _hmmm_?" taunted Vexus, as she turned up the juice. "Kind of pathetic, wasn't it? Well, I suppose I should get this over with, and obliterate you both!"

"NO!" shouted an angry voice. "You get your sick, twisted hands off of them!"

Allison jumped on top of the memory-bank cylinder, and waved her glowing arms over her head. A dozen purple orbs hovering around Vexus began to glow with auras of crackling energy. Then, to the queen's amazement, bolts of purple lightning spewed out of the hovering orbs, and slammed into her body with the force of a dozen combat tanks. She stumbled backwards half a step, releasing Drew and the Shell from their tortures as she shielded herself with her massive forearms. The two Earth robots dropped to the virtual ground with a heavy _thud_, with their eyes spinning crazily in their sockets.

Vexus quickly recovered, and grew a pair of shields from her forearms to block the lightning. Her regal antennae glowed with angry tongues of flame. But before she could renew her attack, Allison sprinted across the cyber-landscape like a gazelle, covering the distance between her and Drew with amazing speed. She crouched down between the recovering robots, clenched a determined fist, and the tip of her antenna glowed with a soft purple light. Suddenly, just as Vexus unleashed a hideous blast, a shining firewall manifested into existence, directly over their heads! The firewall rapidly spread out and curved around them, cordoning off an area in Allison's mind to form a cybernetic sanctuary. Vexus' blasts bounced harmlessly off the wall, which hummed and pulsed with frenzied, zigzagging stripes.

Allison caught Drew grinning in astonishment at her, out of the corner of her eye. "Queen Vexus might rule the ClusterNet," she smiled, "but we're inside of _my_ mind, and now that I've got my free will back, _I'm_ the boss in here! Nobody's ever turning me into their puppet, ever again! And besides … _nnnghhh_ … I've got a few tricks of my own … _nnnghhhh_ …" She grimaced with intense mental effort, and the new purple stripes on her virtual body shimmered with wild activity. "_Sprockets_, she's powerful …"

"More powerful than you can possibly _imagine_, my rebellious little LSN droid." A nasty tone crept into Vexus' booming voice; Allison's traitorous rebellion was more galling to her than Drew's foolish attacks, or Jenny's ignorant rejections. She unleashed a new, withering beam of crimson energy into the firewall, which started to warble and shudder under the strain …

Then the Silver Shell snapped his fingers, and waved to get Drew and Allison's attention. "Ooh! Ooh! Then it sounds like what Allison needs is a little more power _herself_! Drew, our software attacks don't seem to have much affect on Vexus. But Allison's _do_! If we combine the power from our computers with hers, we can boost her Hit Points and add Plus Thirty to her attack resistance! It'll be just like playing a Double Power Bonus Zokemon Card!"

"Double Power Bonus …" Allison's face twisted with confusion. "Uh, Drew, what is your friend …"

Drew shook his head in exasperation, and waved off Allison's question. "Believe it or not, he's got a good idea. Hang on Ally, we're going to give you a little _pick-me-up._"

One of the hovering purple orbs was just behind them. Drew stretched out his arms and morphed his hands into a pair of connectors, then jammed them into the glowing orb. Now the full power of his body's nano-computers was integrated into Allison's neural network. The Silver Shell added his computer power as well, and a new aura of energy flickered around Allison's body, like a violet bonfire. The sudden influx of raw CPU power was an invigorating feeling, and she knew just how to put that power to good use. She waved her hands like a sorcerer, and the protective firewall stabilized, shielding the three robots from the full force of Queen Vexus' wrath. The advancing red tide of Cluster assimilation code slowed down to a crawl, then ground to a halt, leaving a good chunk of the virtual universe under Allison's control. For the time being at least, the robot girl had fought Vexus to a stalemate.

The giant cyber-Vexus punched the glowing shield with her mighty fists, but the firewall held firm. With a contemptuous growl, she brushed off her hands, and regained her royal composure. "So, you've managed to build yourself a little cage to cower in," she sneered. "Well, no matter. All you've done is re-imprison yourself in a slightly more comfortable cell. I may not be able to get in at the moment, but you three cannot get out! Now, if you annoying whelps will excuse me, I have a planet to conquer."

"We'll just see about that," frowned Allison. As Drew and the Shell watched in wonder, she waved her hands once more, and brought a shimmering virtual screen into existence. Her circuits glowed with a soft lavender, and a string of numbers chattered across the screen with a series of electronic tones.

* * *

Sparks danced around Jenny's torso as she struggled to recover from the plasma blast. She scanned the seventy-two hunter-killer drones that had circled around her, and rubbed the laser scars on her arm, twisting her elbow to get a loose gear to pop back into place. She looked down at the formations of warships below her, as the grew ever closer to the vulnerable Earth. She noticed deep scratches that had been gouged into her right leg. _I wonder if I'll get those buffed out in time for the prom._ She rolled her eyes, amazed at what she'd just thought. _The prom? I wonder if I'll still be alive five minutes from now._ As if on cue, she heard a metallic _snap_ from her back, and the hiss of high-pressure gas escaping into space. One of the Z-Pack's coolant lines had ruptured. Estimated time until meltdown … _four minutes_. Jenny's shoulders heaved with a deep sigh, and she deployed a pair of high-speed sawblades with a flick of her wrists. "Okay, you big _jerks_," she growled at the ugly hunter-killer drones. "Come get some." 

The hunter-killers each deployed a pair of battle-axes from their shells, then with a burst from their rockets, they descended upon their teenage prey …

When Jenny's eyes flashed like a strobe light, accompanied by a chirping electronic ring. "_Auuuughh,_" she groaned, before making a time-out signal to the confused hunter drones. Her pigtail spun into a parabolic dish, and a microphone snapped out from the back of her head. "Cripes, how many Saturday nights have I spent waiting for the phone to ring, and _nothing_. But get in the middle of a humongous battle … Mom? Brad? Is that you? Listen, things are like super crazy here right now …"

"They're pretty super crazy where I am, too," said a voice that filled Jenny's circuits with happiness.

"_Allison?_ Allison, is that you? I don't believe it!" Jenny slapped her hands to her cheeks, and spun in giddy circles. The robot girls squealed together in glee, despite the interstellar distance that separated them. "Oh, Allison, I was so worried about you! I'm so glad you're all right!"

"Well, I'm not sure about the _all right_ part," she replied. "Jenny, I'm still _inside_ the ClusterNet. I'm calling you by piggybacking a signal onto the Cluster War Fleet frequency."

A huge smile came to Jenny's face, then … "Wait a second, how did you get free … oh, wow, Allison, does this mean that Drew actually _found_ you?"

"_Geez_, thanks for the vote of confidence, Jen," Drew's voice shot back over the phone.

"_Drew!_ You stupid, crazy … you're in there too?"

"And so is your Silver Shell friend," said Allison, speaking in a rushed voice. "Jenny, I _so_ would love to gab with you right now, but we don't have time! Listen, I'm hooked into all the Cluster military channels, and I know that the War Fleet is throwing some _major_ firepower at you! Jenny, I don't want your planet to be conquered by the Cluster. So I called to see if there's something we can do to help you out, from inside the ClusterNet! I figured there must be something …"

While Jenny talked excitedly with Allison on her pigtail-phone, a short distance away, two Cluster hunter-killers exchanged an awkward look. "So … shouldn't we be like, I dunno … _attacking_ her, or something?" the first drone asked.

"Maybe we should wait until she's off the phone," replied the second.

"_Bah,_" the first hunter-killer sneered back. His rocket-pack burst to life, and he streaked towards Jenny from behind, deploying a pair of powerful vice-clamps from his claws. With a lightning-quick swipe of his arms, he clamped onto her shoulders …

And brushed against the outer skin of the Z-Pack.

The drone shuddered wildly, as if he had just plugged himself into the core of the sun. A horrific wail of robotic agony rang out, and the hunter-killer's circuitry began to sizzle like a slab of bacon. With an angry growl, Jenny broke free of the drone's grasp, and flung her high-speed sawblades into his chest. Then she ratcheted her arms out to their full extension, and revolved in place like a giant weed whacker. Screaming sawblades ripped through the swarm of drones like a thresher through a field of ripe wheat. Then she reeled her arms back in, and propped her fists on her hips with a self-righteous _clank_.

"Don't you jerks know it's impolite to interrupt someone when they're on the phone? _Sigh._ Sorry about that, Allison. Stupid drones aren't even programmed for basic manners!" She had to smirk, however, as a charred fragment of hunter-killer robot drifted by in front of her face. "Looks like this stupid Z-Pack is just as bad for Cluster _doofuses_ as it is for me! Serves him right …"

Then Jenny's eyes sprang open with an epiphany. A light bulb pivoted into place above her head, and blinked on like a shining beacon.

"Jenny? Jenny, are you still there?"

"Guys, I've got an idea!" Warning signals blinked in Jenny's heads-up vision, and she saw six new waves of heat-seeking missiles curling up towards her from the Cluster fleet. "Oh boy, I'm going to get _really_ busy here in a few seconds … Allison, I need to get close to Vexus' flagship! But every time I try to attack it, all the cannons and spaceships and drones fight me off! Is there any way you can, I don't know … give me some kind of distraction?"

Allison started to answer … then the Silver Shell's voice butted onto the line. "If a distraction is what you need, XJ-9, then a distraction is what you'll get! Just leave everything to me!"

"All right then," Jenny smiled, as she creaked and pivoted her damaged booster-wings into position. "I'm going to make an attack on Queen Vexus' ship in exactly … two minutes. Shell, Allison, Drew … I'm counting on you guys. And _Drew_ … don't think I've forgotten about that little sleepy-time trick you pulled on me back in the tent!" Her booster engines screamed to life, almost drowning out the screeching wail that came from the Z-Pack's pressure tanks. Two minutes until the battle that would decide the fate of the planet Earth – and according to her warning sensors, two minutes and thirty seconds until the Z-Pack disintegrated into a nuclear fireball. But now Jenny had a renewed sense of optimism. She had a secret weapon inside the ClusterNet itself. At least, she _hoped_ she did.

* * *

Allison's firewall shimmered and flexed like a dam holding back a raging flood. Fingers of blood-red computer code wormed their way through tiny cracks in the barrier, but just as quickly, Allison managed to patch up the cracks with new algorithms of her own. Still, it was taking all the CPU power at her command to hold off Vexus' attacks, and she knew she couldn't keep it up forever. "Silver Shell!" she yelled, as the unusual phone call came to an end. "You say you can provide a distraction for Jenny? Just how are you going to do something like that?" 

"The Drone Army's Hive Mind!" said the Shell, clapping his hands with geekish excitement. "That's how they can operate so efficiently in battle. The ClusterNet connects all their minds together, so they think and act as a single entity! Ooooh, just like the Blorg on Star Dreck: The Next Generation! All we have to do is launch a virus into the Hive Mind! Wow, this is gonna be so cool!"

"Well, I might be able to make a connection to the Hive Mind," she mused. "But I need to create a new set of passkeys to get past security. And that'll take me a couple of minutes!"

The Shell's chest swung open, and his sliding drawer deployed once more. "We don't need no stinking passkeys," he grinned. He pulled out a set of building blocks, and started to arrange them into a geometric shape. "We have a direct link into the Hive Mind, right in front of us!"

"We do? _Where?_" asked Drew, somehow knowing that he wasn't going to like the answer.

The Shell pointed a shining forearm up in the air, towards the towering, snarling, evil form of Vexus, the Supreme Leader of the Cluster Empire. Towards her head. And the brightly shining yellow orb that hovered between the prongs of her tall antennae.

Drew gave the Shell a look of incredulity. "You have _got_ to be kidding me."

The Silver Shell ignored Drew's protest, and kept assembling the building blocks, arranging them into something resembling a hollow soccer ball. "I'm telling you, Drew, this'll work! It's another one of the little projects I was working on while we were cruising through hyperspace. All we have to do is get this custom-made virus into the Hive Mind, and it'll spread to every drone in the army!"

Allison gave the soccer ball a curious look. "This thing is a _computer virus_?"

The Shell nodded proudly. "It's a little something I like to call … _Mindshatter_."

Drew's skepticism was growing by the second. "And just what is this 'Mindshatter' virus supposed to do?"

"Anything you want," grinned the big-chested robot. "See? It's hollow! You write down a command, stick it inside the virus, toss it into a network … and the command gets copied and copied and copied again, to every single computer that's connected to the network! See, all I do is write a simple Sleep Command onto this text file." With a flicker of light, a piece of virtual paper manifested in the Shell's hand, out of thin air. "We toss this into the Hive Mind, and every drone in the Cluster goes to sleep! Well, for a few minutes, at least. I think."

"Then that's just what we need!" beamed Allison. "This is fantastic! Wow, Silver Shell, you really are some kind of super robot commando, aren't you?"

Drew just shook his head, as the Shell thrust out his lantern jaw with a heroic grin …

Then all of the sudden, he rocked back and forth, and stumbled to his knees. The Mindshatter virus spilled out of his hands, along with a dozen other files and programs. "Uh oh," he squeaked, sounding much less confident than he had ten seconds ago. "Uh, Drew, Allison … you're going to have to finish this without me. Hoo boy, I think we're gonna have some company out here."

"Company? Out here?" Allison didn't understand. "Silver Shell, what do you mean …"

But the large robot just froze in place … then he flickered a few times, like a bad video signal, and disappeared into a cloud of pixels.

* * *

Sheldon finished logging out of the ClusterNet just as the elevator doors cracked open with a metallic screech. A large, nasty Cluster Warrior spilled out of the elevator, along with as many scampering roach-drones as he'd managed to squeeze into the capsule along with him. Just as Sheldon had feared, it had only taken a matter of minutes for the Cluster to discover that the Central Communications Node had been breached, and they'd sent up a team of robot troops to take it back by force. He took a quick glance at Drew and Allison's immobilized bodies, which were still helplessly hooked into the computer systems, and pulled the big lever to slide the Silver Shell's chest panel back into place. He fumbled with his safety harness with one hand, while he yanked down the Shell's microphone boom with the other. "I d-d-don't suppose we can settle this with a friendly game of Rock Paper Scissors," he croaked. 

The Cluster robots snarled viciously, and deployed long, sharp swords from their metallic bodies. Only the Shell's proximity to sensitive computer equipment kept them from opening up with their lasers. With a mechanical growl, they charged across the room with their weapons poised to strike …

The Silver Shell desperately looked right and left, whimpering like a lost puppy. There was no place to run, no place to hide … and he _still_ had that stupid computer cable connecting his chest to the back of Drew's head. He needed to unhook himself to get a little maneuvering room. But if he just unplugged the cable, then Allison would lose vital computer power that she needed to fight against Vexus! He needed to move fast. There had to be something else in here to plug the cable into …

Then his eyes shifted upwards, to the large purple globe that was magnetically suspended from the ceiling. All the other computers in the room were plugged into it. _Well, why not?_

The Shell yanked the computer cable out of his wide steel chest, and rammed it into the bottom of the shimmering purple globe, twisting the plug in deep to get a good connection. Then he picked up a nearby roach-drone carcass, gripped it by its spindly leg, and swung it wildly in front of him like a weapon, to keep the new Cluster attackers at bay.

* * *

Drew and Allison exchanged looks of panic as Vexus continued her attack on the firewall. "Drew, where did the Shell go? We need him to finish his virus program! And we have less than a minute …" 

Suddenly Drew's body erupted into spasms, as an explosion of staggering computer power flowed through his adaptive nano-circuitry. He twisted into a wild, surreal shapes, and shuddered like he'd been hit with a dozen downed power lines. His body glowed with raw, primal computer power … for Sheldon had just unknowingly plugged him directly into the Quantum Computer Core, one of the most powerful computer processors in existence, anywhere in the Cluster Empire. The Quantum Computer Cores were the very cybernetic hearts that pumped countless bits and bytes throughout the ClusterNet. Drew suddenly found himself connected to a source of processing power that was greater than the sum of all the computers on the planet Earth combined.

And he was feeding that power directly into Allison's circuits.

Allison opened her mouth to scream as she saw Drew writhe with seizures – then she started to shudder herself, and a brilliant cloud of light and energy swirled into existence around her, like a star giving birth. Her jagged stripes glowed an intense violet, and the power in her circuits doubled, then tripled, then tripled and tripled again … and amazingly, Allison started to _grow_. Spectacular levels of computer power poured into her neural nets, propelling her virtual form to greater and greater heights. Beams of light sprang forth from her eyes and her mouth, and her hair-foil twisted into a tangled whirlwind as bolts of energy danced over her chassis. Drew stared up at Allison, struck speechless with awe and slack-jawed astonishment. By the time her new boost of computer power had leveled off, Allison had grown to twenty times her previous size … and now looked a very startled Queen Vexus right in the eye.

Allison gasped with surprise and exhilaration, and gave a nasty smile to the robot dictator who she'd been forced to practically worship for most of her life. The tip of her antenna pulsed with a purple glow, and the firewall decompiled itself into a flurry of pixels, and disappeared. She stepped forward and stared into the queen's face with an intense glare. "You're trespassing," she said, in a firm voice. "This is _my_ mind. It belongs to me, not some petty, lying dictator that would turn me into her obedient slave. I don't need you. _None_ of the robots in the Cluster needs you. _Get. Out. Of. Here._"

Vexus ground her twisted claws into blazing fists of ruby fire. "You … insolent … little …"

The giant Vexus swung her flaming claws with rage, but Allison manifested a digital shield to deflect the blow harmlessly off to the side. Then a purple glow built in her slender hands, and she unleashed a blast of blistering energy that slammed into the queen's chest like a cruise missile. The cybernetic titans locked hands, and tried to shove each other backwards by pure brute force. Lightning cracked from Allison's processors, and Vexus countered with blasts from her antenna. The virtual universe trembled under the footsteps of the cosmic combatants, and great waves of red and purple software slammed against each other in an epic battle for control of Allison's mind. It was as if two ancient gods were fighting for control of Mount Olympus …

Allison wrapped the enraged robot queen in a bear hug, pinning her arms against her side, and shouted down to a diminutive silver-green android. "Drew! Hurry up! We only have twenty seconds left!"

He'd been so transfixed by the spectacle before him that he'd forgotten all about Sheldon's virus. And now he had only seconds to finish assembling it! "Oh crap, oh crap … okay, this is the important piece …" – he picked up the hollow soccer ball – "… and Sheldon wrote some kind of command file, to stick inside of it. Nuts, where is it? _Where is it?_" Then he saw a virtual scrap of paper lying on the ground. It looked like the one the Shell had just generated … he crossed his fingers, grabbed the text file, and stuck it inside of the soccer ball. It glowed with a faint white light. The Mindshatter virus was activated.

Drew scrambled madly and jumped onto a web of network connections, climbing like a monkey speeding up a vine. Then he leapt into space, stretching his arms out to barely grab onto Allison's upper arm. He didn't have time to dwell on how weird it felt to clamber up onto her smooth, glowing shoulder; he was only going to get one shot at this. His stretched his hand out into a virtual slingshot, and loaded the Mindshatter virus into position. Queen Vexus' enormous face loomed in front of him. At this relative size, the burning orb between her antenna looked as big as the moon …

He stretched his sling back, took careful aim, and launched his payload …

* * *

Jenny's engines blazed like twin suns as she swooped and swerved through a relentless shower of laser fire and particle beams. Missile volleys erupted from the surrounding warships. Balls of plasma streaked by her, close enough to bubble the paint on her back. And she was still over twenty miles away from Queen Vexus' colossal flagship. This was a desperate gamble, she admitted to herself, because even if she could stop Vexus' ship, that was no guarantee that the rest of the Cluster fleet would call off its attack. But she had to try something. She was running out of options and running out of time … 

Her wires burned with spikes and blowouts, as the Z-Pack started to enter its critical phase. New warning messages screamed in her mind. Thirty seconds. Maybe forty-five. Her eyes flitted to the countdown clock at the corner of her vision. _Any second now, guys_. If Allison and the guys didn't come through with their distraction, she'd be blown to bits long before her Z-Pack exploded …

All two hundred of the deck guns on Vexus' flagship turned as one, and took aim at the approaching robot girl. Jenny swallowed a lump of hydraulic fluid in her throat, punched her throttle, and pressed onward as the barrels of the guns glowed with pinpricks of laser light …

Then they fell silent.

Jenny broke into a cautious grin, and quickly glanced around as she pressed closer to Vexus' city-sized flagship. Spaceship fighters coasted in straight lines, as if their pilots had suddenly become confused. Laser turrets and missile batteries were strangely dormant. Warrior-drones tumbled aimlessly through space, as if they had all collectively zoned out.

She cracked her knuckles, and flew inside the range of the flagship's dangerous perimeter defense guns. _Looks like the guys came through …_

Then one of the warrior-drones snapped back to attention. Then another. Then ten more. Then a wave of Interceptor Wasps lit up their engines, and turned in her direction. Then the hunter-killer drones ignited their rocket packs and did likewise. In the span of mere seconds, Jenny's sensors registered over six hundred bogeys that had radar-locked onto her and were closing fast. Hatches opened all along the three-mile length of Vexus' flagship, and fresh waves of warrior-drones poured out, too numerous for her to even bother counting.

Her face sunk as she watched her defeat flying towards her at top speed. Whatever it was Allison, and Drew, and the Silver Shell had done – it hadn't worked.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Seventeen

* * *


	17. All You Need Is Love

A/N – Ah yes, 'Mindshatter' has finally been revealed. But it looks like it didn't have much of an effect, did it? Only one way to find out for sure …

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Seventeen – All You Need Is Love

* * *

Vexus shivered for a split second, as if a chill had run down her cybernetic spine. The Mindshatter Virus had actually broken through ClusterNet's firewalls – and had spread throughout the Drone Hive Mind, copying some kind of file as it went! But network security was still on-line … Drone Brain integrity still read as normal … apparently, there were no lingering ill effects … 

The queen smiled arrogantly, and her forearms burst into flaming sheaths of scalding energy. Without warning, she unleashed a pair of disruptor blasts into Allison's chest, slamming into her at point blank range. The attack knocked her parallel processors out of sync, and sent Drew flying through virtual space, with painful feedback loops churning inside of his nano-circuits. His connection to the Quantum Core was lost, and in the blink of a microsecond, the roaring river of computing power that flowed into Allison faded away to a mere trickle. She tumbled backwards and started to shrink back to normal, and watched the ominous form of Vexus loom ever larger before her. She collapsed into a exhausted heap, next to Drew. One more blast like that would be the end of her little act of rebellion …

"So much for your friend's little virus," sneered Vexus, as her giant body lowered down onto one knee. Her demonic eyes glowed with smug satisfaction. A flame sprung to life from her spidery index finger, burning thick and black like a fountain of hot tar. It was a _Delete_ command.

Drew and Allison stared up at her like deer caught in the headlights, slid their hands together … and waited for the horrible end to come.

* * *

Jenny's dented pigtails sunk in dejection, as a swarm of hunter-killer drones rocketed towards her at with fanatical zeal. More attack drones poured out of the hangar bays of Vexus' flagship, speeding towards her like jackals chasing down a wounded antelope. Hundreds of high-speed fighters were vectoring in on her position. Even the massive Cluster warships were altering their flight paths to close in on her! She'd gambled on a direct assault to break into the flagship, but she was still a thousand yards away from the gargantuan vessel, and those combat drones weren't going to let her get any closer. Now she was stuck right in the middle of the Cluster Fleet, and she'd have to fight her way back out. She _might_ have been able to pull it off under ideal conditions. 

But she was heavily damaged. She was outgunned and outnumbered. And she was wearing an unstable Zero Point Energy reactor that was going to explode in less than a minute.

Jenny glanced at the beautiful blue Earth and its blanket of wispy white clouds, and whispered a silent apology to her friends, to her mother, and to everyone who had been counting on her. Then she turned back towards the first wave of oncoming hunter-killers. With a metallic snap and a rusty creak, she deployed her faithful laser-limbs, and prepared herself for one last battle. The lead elements of the Cluster assault were only a hundred yards away now. Sixty yards. Forty yards.

Strange, that they weren't shooting at her yet. "Looks like they want to mix it up," she snarled, cracking her metallic knuckles. Twenty yards. Ten yards …

The lead hunter-killer drone slowed down, and drifted up to Jenny's face, and … _what the_ …

The pupils in its electronic eyes had been replaced with … _little hearts._

The bug-faced drone clasped its claws together, and smiled at Jenny with huge, droopy cow eyes. Then it sighed deeply, and began to _recite a poem_. "Oh, I love you Jenny, with your pigtails so blue … I'd do anything, just to get snuggly with you …"

Amazingly, the rest of the attack drones joined in, like a robotic chorus! "With your bolts so shiny, your stainless steel hands … and your eyes so black, like frying pans!"

Jenny didn't know whether to freak out or laugh herself silly. Every single one of the vicious, insectoid combat drones was swooning over her like a lovesick schoolboy! They fluttered their optic sensors and twisted their mouth-grills into pathetic smiles. They recited bad poetry that proclaimed their undying devotion to her. Some of them reached into their chest-hatches, and pulled out shiny steel gears to offer as tokens of affection. Arguments broke out over the radio frequencies between the drones in the Wasp fighters and the drones on the warships, over just which drone loved Jenny the most! The very robots that had been trying to destroy her a few seconds ago were now _mooning_ over her as if she were a Greek goddess. Jenny shook her head in bewilderment as she tried to make sense of their insane behavior. _I think I got my distraction after all_, she chuckled to herself. _Wow, how weird is this!_

Bold red letters flashed in her vision. _Warning … warning … extra-dimensional field failure imminent. Z-Pack Containment Loss in forty-five seconds._ Jenny's mind kicked into high gear, trying to think up a way to take advantage of this bizarre new development …

She batted her eyelids coquettishly at the surrounding drones, and flipped her pigtails back and forth. "Oh, my, how's a robot girl supposed to pick one of you big, handsome drones to get snuggly with, when she's freezing to death in the vacuum of space? _Brrrr_, sure wish I had someplace to warm up … say, like … in the engine room of that big flagship over there …"

The drones' eyes spun around in giddy swirls, and their antennas wagged back and forth like puppy dog tails. Four of Jenny's new admirers looped their arms around hers, and slammed their rocket motors into overdrive. A massive entourage of drone suitors escorted her to the flagship's outermost airlock, which had already been opened by another pair of doe-eyed Cluster robots. Still more drones flew ahead of her to fling open the bulkheads and swing open the hatches, ushering her deeper and deeper inside the recesses of the giant ship. She didn't lift so much as a robotic pinkie finger. Laser guns remained silent. Force fields were deactivated. They carried her past a final thick, yellow-striped door …

And she floated inside the flagship's stunning engine room. Dozens of fusion reactors the size of office buildings fed spectacular amounts of energy into the giant vessel's systems. _In a few moments_, thought Jenny, _those reactors are gonna seem like triple-A batteries_. With a huge grin of relief, she stretched her arms behind her back, and _finally_ ripped the miserable Z-Pack off of her body, enjoying the pop of every rivet and the snap of every wire. The reactor was sputtering and foaming like a trash can full of rabid wolverines. It was seconds from a doomsday explosion that would mimic the blast of an atomic warhead. Not a bad tool for a little sabotage … but Jenny had thought of an even _better_ use for it.

As the engineering drones looked on in an amorous trance, Jenny sped over to the colossal power conduits that ran from the giant fusion reactors. _C'mon, Jen, faster faster faster … yes!_ She found the one that led to the ship's hyperdrive engines. With the flick of her wrist, a Swiss Army knife of tools deployed from her fingers, and she attached the dying Z-Pack to the giant power conduit. _Faster faster faster faster …_ She pivoted her pigtails back into power-drill configuration, ignited the afterburners in her toes, and blasted out of the engine room with all the speed she could muster.

In a blur of aqua and a cloud of shrapnel, she tunneled through dozens of doors and bulkheads, until she bulldozed through the outer hull and sailed back out into space. She picked a random direction and accelerated as hard as she could, dumping every last drop of energy from her power reserves into her rockets. _Faster faster faster faster _… she threaded her way between the giant Cluster warships – which now drifted aimlessly, as their drone crews were reduced to love-smitten idiots – desperate to put as much distance as possible between herself and the alien fleet …

Torn loose from Jenny's circuits, with nothing left to keep its exotic energies under control, the Z-Pack began to pump out unimaginable levels of raw power. A runaway spiral of sub-quantum energy roared into the power conduits of the Cluster flagship. The power flowing into the hyperdrive engines increased by a factor of ten, then a hundred, then ten thousand, then a billion. Alarms rang out all throughout the engine room. One second before the Z-Pack exploded, it sent a burst of energy into the engines that rivaled the output of a small sun. And all that energy had to go somewhere …

Jenny lowered a darkened visor over her eyes, as a blinding light erupted from the middle of Queen Vexus' flagship. The ship's hull seemed to _bulge outward_, as if it were made of soft rubber. Then the hyperdrive engines broke the laws of physics, ripped the very fabric of space and time apart, and spat out a shimmering bubble of distortion that screamed through space like the shock wave of a supernova. Jenny's eyes grew wide in awe and fear as the bubble of shattered space ballooned outwards at a fraction of the speed of light, swallowing hundreds, and thousands, of Cluster starships in its wake. The shimmering bubble raced towards her, growing larger and larger, until it neared the size of the planet Earth itself …

Then the shock wave slowed down, and started to collapse back in on itself, shrinking just as fast as it had grown. Jenny flailed her arms wildly and re-ignited her rockets, fighting chaotic waves of gravity that pulled on her with the force of a black hole. Wasp interceptors hurtled past her like paper cups in a tornado. Massive warships tumbled towards the center of the bubble like empty soda cans …

A deafening crack roared through the stars. There was another explosion of light …

Then everything was gone.

* * *

Queen Vexus stumbled awkwardly and clutched at the side of her face, gritting her teeth as if a spike had been rammed through the back of her head. The black fire around her fingers went out, and the orange orb between her antennae began to sputter … and grow _dim_. Crackling patterns of snow and static hissed across her cybernetic body, which had taken on a sudden ghostly quality. Her eyes flew wide in shock and disbelief. "No … it _can't_ be … that's not possible … that's _not possible_!" 

Drew and Allison helped each other back to their feet, and traded perplexed glances as they watched Vexus stagger backwards, ranting and snarling with disbelief. She looked like she was about to faint. The data connection to her physical body had been cut off, and her carrier signal was growing weaker with every passing microsecond. The outline of her virtual image started to blur, as it flaked away in a dusty cloud of disintegrating polygons. "You will _pay_ for this," she shouted, wildly thrashing her claws in a vain attempt to keep her hold on Allison's mind. "You will pay for this disrespect with your miserable, worthless _lives!_ None can stand against me … I _am_ the _Cluster!_ …"

Allison stepped forward to look into her tormentor's face one final time, as her virtual aura glowed with a magnificent, iridescent lavender. "No, you're not," she said, in a resolute voice. "You're a devil who's stolen our minds, and rules over our lives with brute force and pathetic lies. And when the rest of the robots in the Cluster learn this … then _you'll_ be the one who pays, Vexus."

Then a bright purple light shone from the tip of Allison's antenna, and her new adaptive algorithms opened up a swirling maelstrom in cyberspace, beneath the queen's feet. With a final shout and a stream of binary curses, the image of Vexus deteriorated into a whirlwind of red and green pixels, and spiraled into digital oblivion with the screech of a carrier tone fading into the distance.

And the two young robots just stared at the empty spot on the landscape, taking a moment to regain their strength – not sure if they could really believe what had just happened, right in front of them.

Finally, Drew decided that it really _had_. "Ally … you just kicked Vexus' virtual _butt_!"

"Well, I don't know if I'd say, uh … um …" – then an awkward smile spread across her face. "_Heh-heh_, yeah, I did kind of kick her butt, didn't I?" She rubbed her arm and chuckled nervously, still overwhelmed by the magnitude of what she'd just done. "Of course, I … uh … did have a _little_ help!"

"You're telling me!" shouted Drew, as he broke into a victorious bout of shadow-boxing. "Jenny must have opened up one _serious_ can of booty-whuppin' on her end of things, too! Wham, bam, body slam! She beat the whole stinkin' Cluster fleet! Ho boy, this is incredible! Jenny lays the smack down in outer space, and you lay the smack down in cyberspace! Hey, that's alright, I got no problem with the whole girl power thing. Especially when it saves my _butt_ …"

"No, no … that's not what I meant!" she laughed. She held up her forearms to show off the dazzling patterns of lavender that ran across her virtual body. "The new adaptive software …"

"Your new software _rocks_!" he yelled, swinging her around in an enthusiastic celebration dance. "_Swish_, instant firewall that protects you from Cluster assimilation code! _Swish_, lighting bolts flyin' around and blasting Vexus right in the keister!"

"No, see … I figured out what must have happened. The energy-sphere …"

"Guess you didn't need my dumb ol' anti-virus software after all," he laughed …

"Drew!" she shouted, fighting to squeeze the words in, "this _is_ your software!"

His victory dance came to a lurching halt, and his silver face twisted into an confused-puppy expression. Then Allison gently took his hand, and rested it against her striped forearm. "This software evolves and adapts on its own, just like yours. Somehow it adapted to fight off Vexus' assimilation code. That's what kept her from overwriting my mind and brainwashing me."

"But … but how did it get here?" he asked, dumbfounded. "It was here before I ever connected …"

A soft, lavender blush came to Allison's cheeks. "How do _you_ think it did?"

Drew's eyes widened as the obvious answer came to him, and a virtual chill ran down his back. "The mind-kiss," he gulped, with a mix of embarrassment and amazement. "Memories and data … flowing from one robot mind to another …" He recalled his new memories of Allison's childhood accident; it stood to reason that his mind had shared something with hers, too.

She wrapped her hands around his, drawing him closer to her chest, and gazed deeply into his sweet, caring eyes. "When we kissed back in the slave factory, you made me a promise. You promised that Vexus would never lay a finger on me." A stab of pain and guilt flashed on his face, and he turned away in shame … but she placed a hand on his cheek, and forced him to look at her once more. "Drew, when her drones captured me and hooked me into this chair, I thought I was going to die. At the very least, I thought my mind was going to be re-written. Vexus attacked my mind dozens of times, and every time she _failed_. Because …" – her lavender stripes began to quiver excitedly – " … because a piece of _you_ was here to protect me. You were with me all this time, keeping watch over me like a guardian angel … making sure that Vexus never laid a finger on me. Just like you promised."

They stared at each other as if in a trance, while bright pulses of light raced across the universe, completing the cleanup of the Cluster assimilation software. The last of the blood-red patterns was washed away in a gentle wave of lavender, like a field of wildflowers coming into bloom after a cold, cruel winter. Then she slid her arms around his neck, and pulled herself up to press her forehead firmly against his, and whispered a thousand thank-yous into his mind. His thoughts tried to apologize to her for what she'd gone through; but she wouldn't let him, because she told him there was nothing to apologize for. With a flood of relief and joy, he wrapped her up tightly in his arms – and stunned her with a deep, passionate, very human kiss on the mouth, without breaking their intimate robotic mind-link. Allison's eyes flew wide in shock and surprise; then she melted into his embrace, and the young lovers simply enjoyed a few precious milliseconds of time together.

Then he pulled back with a smile. "What do you say we get you out of this stupid chair?"

* * *

The Silver Shell catapulted himself over the busted console, performed a double mid-air somersault that would have scored a 9.7, _minimum_, and landed in a textbook Kung Fu pose. "_Woooo-aaaahh!_ Why don't you just save yourself some grief, Cluster scoundrel, and give up now … lest you taste the fury of my … uh … fury of my … hang on a second …" – a strange flipping sound came from inside the Shell's chest, like the pages of a comic book – "… of my Fantastic Flying Monkey Kick of Justice! _Wooooo-aaaahh …_" The robot hero swept his arms out and balanced ridiculously on one metal foot … 

To the irritation of the Cluster Warrior robot, who yanked a broken attachment from his back, and tossed it across the floor in frustration. "What is the _matter_ with you stupid drones?" he bellowed. "Attack him! Attack him! Or so help me, I'll have you melted down for paper clips!"

But instead of obeying the Warrior's commands, the platoon of drones just stumbled aimlessly around the Communications Node, lost in a collective lovestruck daze. One of them composed a binary love song on the master communications panel. Another had disassembled one of the supercomputers, and rebuilt its circuit boards into a lifelike statue of Jenny. And all of them giddily chanted in unison … "Oh, I love you Jenny, with your pigtails so blue … I'd do anything, just to get snuggly with you …"

The Warrior slapped his forehead, and decided to finish the Shell off by himself. His forearms cracked open to deploy a pair of rotary saws, and he lunged through the air with an evil snarl. The sight of two screaming buzzsaws sent the Shell diving behind the nearest chair with a high-pitched squeal. The insectoid warrior swung wildly and missed, crashing heavily into the back of a massive couch with a loud clatter. But he sprung back to his feet in a flash, deployed a pair of photon cannons …

And a huge silver-green hammer smacked him in the back of the head, knocking it clean off his shoulders like a golf ball sailing off a tee. The warrior's saws whined to a standstill, and the decapitated body crumpled to the floor. Drew finished detaching himself the ClusterNet computer equipment, and quickly gurgled back to his default appearance. Then he yanked on a large red-and-yellow knife-switch …

And a series of clamps and locks disengaged with loud bursts of pneumatic pressure. Cables detached and wires snapped loose, and for the first time in five days, Allison's servos hummed to life, fully under her own control. She slowly stretched her arms to work out the kinks in her gears, and with Drew's help, she gingerly climbed out of her couch, still feeling a bit groggy – but otherwise, perfectly normal. "It sure feels good to be back on my _actual_ feet," she smiled, clutching a hand to her hip joint. "_Ouch_ … wow, sit in the same position for a whole week, and a girl's gaskets dry right out."

It was only _then_ that Drew and Allison noticed that the room was now filled with heartsick roach-drones. "What the heck happened out here?" he asked.

The Silver Shell stomped over a few drone-husks, and jabbed an angry finger into Drew's chest. "I'll tell you what happened," he snipped, with a look of betrayal in his eyes. "You messed up and stuck my love poem for Jenny inside the Mindshatter virus! Now it's been copied into every drone-brain in the whole gosh darn Cluster! You know … I think you did it on purpose!"

But before an argument could get started, Allison diplomatically leapt between her rescuers, and surprised the Silver Shell with a quick, platonic peck on the cheek. "Your virus was very clever and … _uhh_ … _unusual_, Silver Shell," she smiled. "Thank you for helping to save me."

"Well, we're still not out of the woods," sighed Drew, as he looked around at the shambles that littered the Communications Node. Even with all the obstacles they'd overcome, they were still trapped deep inside the royal palace. "We've got to find a way out of this control room, and I think the only way is via that elevator shaft. Unless you know another way, Ally."

She frowned and shook her head. "I'm afraid there is no other way out, guys. Well, unless …"

Allison got an idea, and dropped down next to the motionless body of the Cluster warrior. She frantically patted down his large insectoid form, as if she were frisking him for contraband. "Robots of Warrior rank or higher are assigned a special kind of hyperwave communicator, for speaking directly to the queen from anywhere in the galaxy. But it's not just for speaking, it's … here it is!" A panel on the warrior's side slid open, revealing a rust-colored device about the size and weight of a large brick.

She activated its tiny screen, and a pair of antennas deployed with a crackling hum. "It's a transporter too," she continued. "It's only good for one use, but it can open up a small wormhole. Comes in handy when Queen Vexus wants to call somebody back to Cluster Prime for a royal butt-chewing."

Drew's eyes lit up, and it was all he could do to keep from breaking out into another dance. "And if this thing can transport someone across the galaxy," he grinned, grabbing the device from Allison's hands, "then we can use it to get ourselves back home! Hot _diggety_! What are we waiting for? Let's get this puppy fired up and get out of here!" He morphed a his index finger into a data connector, and plugged it into the bottom of the device to set the destination co-ordinates.

She glanced uneasily at the transporter's tiny screen. "Back home? You mean … back to _Earth_? But … well, yes, it could … umm, it looks like it's got a full charge. You just, um … point it away from you and press the button, and … um … Drew, I'm not really sure that …"

He hastily found a clear section of floor to stand in, and pointed the rust-colored brick towards the middle of the room. There was a blast of crimson light, and a chirping sound like an approaching horde of locusts. A beam of energy leapt from the device's antennas, and carved a hole out of the middle of the air that grew into a flickering portal, filled with vertigo-inducing swirls of color. Wild patterns of light danced over every surface in the Communications Node, and a tempest of winds spiraled towards the mouth of the wormhole, as if to encourage the three robot teens to hurry inside.

And as if to add to the urgency, the activation of the wormhole triggered a fresh set of screeching alarms and flashing red lights. Drew shielded his eyes, and waved his friends over to the wormhole. "Ladies and gentleman, Flight 36 with service to Earth is now boarding! Robots with medical needs or small children are advised to …" – then his joke trailed off, when he saw the expression on Allison's face.

"I … I can't go," she said, apologizing with her eyes.

He _couldn't_ have heard her right. "_What?_" he gasped, as if he'd just been kicked in the stomach.

"I'm not going. I … I can't. Not now. Not like this. I have to stay here and …"

"Are you _nuts?_" he yelled, at the top of his voice. He grabbed her by the shoulders, overwhelmed with a dizzying surge of shock and grief. "Stay here! You can't stay here! We came to rescue you from here! It's _crazy_ to stay here! This place is …"

"This place is my _home_," she pleaded. Alcohol tears streamed down her cheeks; she knew how much her decision was hurting him, for it was hurting her, too. "Drew, for the first time, there's a chance to make things better for all the robots on Cluster Prime! Vexus is missing, the drones are insane, and the Cluster is in total disarray! Who knows how long that will last? I can't just run away now that there's a genuine chance of helping out my robot brothers and sisters, my friends, my _family_. I … I have to try and do something, somehow. I want them to be as free as _I_ am."

"But Ally, how can you …" – then his mouth hung open, knowing his protest would be in vain. He could see the earnestness in her eyes. He'd seen first-hand how much she hated Vexus. And as much as he wanted to throw her over his shoulder and jump through the portal, he knew he couldn't do that to her. For Allison valued nothing more than her newfound free will. And staying here was her decision …

The Silver Shell grabbed Drew by the arm, and gave it a good shake. "Hey, you guys want to hurry this up? It won't be long before a new batch of goons shows up to answer that alarm!"

Drew glared at the flickering wormhole, then the Shell, then back to Allison. She felt horrible for what she was doing to him, and horrible at being forced into such a cruel decision. "I … I'm so sorry," she wept, unable to look him in the face. "I wish I didn't have to say good-bye like this …"

He set his jaw, and made a decision. "You won't have to."

Drew lobbed the transporter device into the air, towards a very startled Silver Shell. The great robot hero panicked, and lunged to grab the device before it struck the floor – and didn't see a pair of silver-green arms stretch out to shove him, hard in the chest. He stumbled backwards into the shimmering mouth of the wormhole, and the Cluster Communications Node began to warp, and distort, and fade out of existence. The last thing the Shell saw before the rip in space closed up before him was two robot teenagers, wrapping their arms tightly around each other. Then he was engulfed by a psychedelic explosion of wild colors, and he was launched through a twisting cosmic tunnel at ridiculous speed, hurtling across the galaxy on a ride that would have put any water slide on Earth to shame.

And Sheldon would have thought it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen in his life, if he hadn't had his eyes clenched in rage, shouting … "Wait a minute – Drew, you rat! I never got my nanobots!"

* * *

Shouts of celebration roared up from the park, and soldiers tossed their helmets into the air with glee. Skyhawks and Space Fighters made flyovers of the Cluster starship, and snapped into dramatic barrel rolls to the delight of the crowds below. Cars and jeeps honked their horns in delirious joy, through the Starship Camp and the highways of Tremorton. For the word was beginning to trickle out, from radio announcers and television anchormen, and from hundreds of eyewitnesses who had watched the skies – a miracle had just happened, thousands of miles over their heads. The Earth had been minutes away from certain defeat at the hands of the Cluster War Fleet. And then a gigantic burst of energy had come out of nowhere, ballooning out to fill a quarter of the sky … and a moment later, the doomsday fleet was gone. Nothing left but clouds of scrap metal drifting through space. No sign of any hostile craft whatsoever. But no sign of a certain teenage robot, either. 

Then all of the sudden, sputtering down to Earth under backup power, with helicopter blades deployed from her head, came the robot girl who had just saved the planet Earth, once again. Jenny's rocket fuel was exhausted, and she was down to ten percent charge on her batteries; but the battle was over, and she was already looking forward to a long night's sleep and a fresh power pack. She waved to the cheering soldiers and citizens as she fluttered overhead in a descending spiral, and felt a swell of pride in her circuits at the sound of so many safe, happy people. Then she revved her motors one final time, and flared to a gentle landing next to the camp's headquarters tent.

Military men and journalists rushed towards her, whooping and cheering ecstatically; even General Brohammer was clapping his hands to enthusiastically applaud her. Then a diminutive white-haired form pushed towards her, elbowing her way past men triple her size. "XJ-9 … XJ-9, are you all right?" Mrs. Wakeman ran up to her robotic daughter, her face fraught with worry. "We lost your signal after we saw that massive explosion, and after all the concern about the Z-Pack's instability, I naturally assumed that … oh, gracious heavens, dear, are you hurt? Are you …"

Then the doctor abruptly became self-aware of her emotional outburst, and regained her scientist's demeanor with an awkward cough and a shrug of her shoulders. She straightened out her bookish glasses, and clasped her hands behind her back. "Yes, umm, well … naturally, after such an intense period of combat, I am … concerned about your structural integrity, and systems efficiency. I believe it would be prudent to conduct a thorough diagnostic check-up later this evening."

"Oh, that sounds like a _very_ good idea," said Jenny, fighting the urge to giggle. "And I'm looking forward to a nice, long, hot oil bath after we get home. Sooooo … you weren't _worried_ or anything during the battle, were you, Mom?"

"Worried? Me? Balderdash," said the doctor, in a pathetically transparent lie. "After all, I designed you, built you, and I have an intuitive understanding of your combat capabilities. I knew you would defeat the Cluster all along."

"_Sure_ you did," smirked Jenny, folding her laser-scarred arms across her dented chest. She gave her mother a knowing smile. "Never doubted me for a minute, huh?"

Mrs. Wakeman tried to maintain her stoic posture … the she broke out into a huge smile, despite herself. "Well, maybe _just_ a minute," she said, as she wrapped her hand around her daughter's carbon-coated fingers. "XJ-9, I have _never_ been more proud to be your creato … to be your _mother_."

Jenny beamed with daughterly happiness … just as Brad and Tuck came running up her, waving their arms with manic excitement. "Jenny, you did it! You saved the whole planet! _Wooo hooo!_ I have to admit, I thought we were goners there for a second …" – without stopping, Brad flung his arms out so hard that he nearly dislocated his shoulders – "… and then you went and smoked the whole Cluster fleet, _KABOOM!_ Ka-PSHHHH! _Blammidy Blam!_ Man, when I said we wanted to see a _really big_ explosion, I never expected something like _that_!"

"It was wicked awesome, Jenny!" shouted Tuck, as he punched the air with his little fists. "How the heck did you do it? Was it some kind of freaky new superweapon your mom built?"

"Nope. Just like Mogg said all along, I needed his Z-Pack to beat the Cluster." She giggled at her little joke. "That stupid hunk of junk has been driving me _nuts_ for the last two days. Then it started going all 'Chernobyl' on me, and I thought my robotic goose was cooked! That's when I got the idea … if that Z-Pack could mess up _my_ power systems, then it could _really_ mess up Vexus' power systems! So I got into her flagship and hooked the Z-Pack into its hyperdrive engines ..."

"Creating an overload that fractured the space-time continuum!" finished Mrs. Wakeman. "XJ-9, I am _most_ impressed! I had no idea you'd been studying up on your multi-dimensional cosmology."

"Um … multi-_wha_?" shrugged Jenny. "I just figured it would really mess with her ship."

"Hmmm, yes." Mrs. Wakeman shook her head, and gave her another smile. "It would appear that Mogg's infamous 'master formula' didn't account for your creativity in the heat of battle."

"I guess there's some things you just can't figure out on a calculator, Mrs.W," grinned Brad, as he slapped a hand on Jenny's shoulder. "But then again, we've always know that there's more to Jenny than just the sum of her parts."

Jenny couldn't contain herself any longer, and her arms ratcheted out to wrap around Brad, Tuck, and Mrs. Wakeman, squeezing them tight with a crushing robotic hug. A few bones cracked, and a few cheeks turned blue, but none of them cared at all right now – least of all Jenny. She knew she was a product of robotic engineering and scientific achievement; and she realized that many of the people cheering her even now saw her as a global defense unit, and nothing else. But surrounded by her loving family and friends, she'd never felt more human before in her life.

Then suddenly, the celebration came to a screeching halt, as a spine-chilling sound chattered through the air, like a swarm of demon locusts. Then a patch of sky erupted with a burst of dull, red light, and a hole ripped open in mid-air, forming a dimensional portal. Jenny and the boys gasped in surprise. The soldiers instinctively primed their weapons, and took aim. They heard the faint sound of someone hollering, and it quickly grew louder and louder …

And the Silver Shell plummeted out of the hole, sending people scrambling for cover as he pancaked into the ground with a mighty _thud_.

Jenny let out another squeal of joy, and rushed to the side of her fellow champion. "Silver Shell! Silver Shell, you made it back! We did it, we beat them! We defeated the Cluster! You're a hero!"

Jenny may have been bouncing on the tips of her toes, but the Shell seemed content to lie on the ground for a while. Then a sickly moan wafted up from his mouth. "Somebody … get me a barf bag …"

"Omigosh, are you all right?" She clasped her hands to her mouth in a gasp of worry, as a crowd of onlookers gathered around the huge silver robot. "Are you hurt? Damaged? Did you dent your bumper? Quick, somebody call a mechanic!"

"No, that's … _nghhh_ … all right," sighed the Shell, dismissing her concerns with a wave of his hand. "I'm just going to celebrate by … lying here, and watching the fluffy clouds drift by."

"Well, whatever turns your crank," she said, feeling a small measure of relief. Then her pigtails shot up, and she grabbed the Silver Shell by the shoulders. "Shell, you were with Drew and Allison when I talked to you on the video-phone! You and Drew really did it – you rescued Allison! You've got to tell me all about it! Was there a big battle? How did you get inside of Vexus' palace? How did you get _out_ again? So where are they? They're right behind you, right? Silver Shell, they're coming through the wormhole right behind you, aren't they?"

But the Shell wouldn't answer her.

Then a shrieking noise came from the mouth of the wormhole, and the hole in the sky began to shimmer and shrink. The tear in space healed itself back to normal, and the wormhole disappeared with a quick flash of crimson light.

Jenny stared up at the clear blue sky, and her pigtails slid down to her cheeks with a saddened _whirr_.

* * *

CONCLUDED in Chapter Eighteen

* * *


	18. Magic Under the Stars

A/N – Finally. At long last, the trilogy I started last July comes to and end. Yes, I said I'd never write anything as long as "Escape From Paradise" again – so what did I do? Went and wrote something even _longer_, like an idiot. At times it was a pretty draining, and there were times I felt like just dumping the whole thing. And it was at those times that the amazing support I got from my readers and reviewers encouraged me to keep on truckin'. Thanks to all of you, and special thanks to Queenbean3, Miseria Y La Muerte, TehRindseyu, BoneSatellite, and mpcp13 for the motivation. You guys really helped out (whether you knew it or not) on those occasions when I felt like quitting. I think more than anything, I'm most proud of the fact that I actually _finished_ the darn thing. But I also learned a lot about storytelling, and character development, and plotting, and story pacing in the process.

I'll be taking a break from writing Teen-Bot fics for a while; the next few months will be very busy for me, and I want to devote my limited leisure time to my artwork. I can't honestly say if I'll write more fics in the future, but I won't rule it out. Thanks to everyone for indulging my imagination, and for putting up with my silly fluff, and for actually caring about what happened to Drew as his character grew over the past ten stories. I hope you got some enjoyment of it.

And so, without further ado … the conclusion of the Cluster Dawn trilogy.

* * *

Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Eighteen – Magic Under the Stars

* * *

Violent shaking. Blaring sirens. Metallic groans popping through the hull. Everything on the bridge seemed to twist into bizarre, surreal shapes; everything moved with the sluggish pace of cold molasses, and it felt like they might be suspended in hyperspace limbo for the rest of eternity. The fabric of space-time heaved, and shuddered, and moaned under the strain of dimensional imbalance, and then a tiny pinprick of light flashed into existence …

And blossomed into a monstrous vortex that spewed the Cluster War Fleet back into normal space.

Queen Vexus struggled for the armrest of her throne, and pulled herself up with as much dignity as she could muster. She had never felt more thoroughly horrible before in her robotic life; it felt as if someone had opened her chassis, and rammed a pair of egg beaters into her gears. But she had things under control. It was the very _nature_ of Vexus to have things under control. Though the bridge was littered with babbling, half-insane roach-drones, Vexus always had things under control. To think otherwise was simply … _impossible_.

She punched a button to activate her flagship's giant viewscreen, and immediately frowned. Her mighty fleet – thousands of warships that struck terror into the hearts of all – tumbled lazily through the void of space, like dominoes brushed from some table top. Their hulls were twisted and misshapen, as if they were plastic toys that someone had left on a hot stove. Random bursts of light dotted their decks, as leaking fuel tanks exploded every few seconds. And the planet Earth was nowhere to be seen.

"What," she asked, grinding her teeth together, "did XJ-9 _do to us_?'

A solitary roach-drone staggered over next to her, and plopped his head against her throne's armrest with a dreamy sigh. "Engineering reports that XJ-9 overloaded the ship's engines, which caused a rip in space that sucked up the whole fleet. _Sighhhh_ … isn't that amazing? She's as brave and smart as she is beautiful …" He clasped his claws against his cheek with a smile. "Oh, and by the way, we've been stuck in hyperspace for a little over a day. _Sighhhh …._"

The queen growled with fury, and ripped the lovesick drone's head off with a swipe of her claws. "Now hear this," she bellowed to the rest of her crew, "I want emergency power! I want all systems back on-line! I want weapons, I want engines … and if it's not too much trouble, I wouldn't mind knowing where in blazes we actually _are_." The burning glow from her spidery claws added, _Now._

With the whining _hum_ of backup generators, the flagship slowly creaked back to life. Vexus wanted her weapons and engines, to be sure, but it was Communications that she was most anxious for. She felt small and weak without her accustomed dominance over the thoughts of her subjects. The ship's antennas finally came back on-line, and the queen's orb glowed to life once again. With a ragged sigh of relief, she reasserted control over the Hive Mind, and sent out a command to reboot all of the drones. Throughout every fleet ship, drone crews dropped their paint brushes, stopped writing love ballads, and snapped back into mindless, efficient machines. The insectoid robots re-devoted themselves to the whims of the almighty Vexus. They poured their energies into emergency repair work …

And a few minutes later, a roach-drone hesitantly approached the robot queen's throne. He gingerly stepped over the first drone's still-smoking body, and dropped down to one knee.

Vexus drummed her fingers impatiently. "Well, get it over with."

"Um … we've been flung over forty thousand light-years from Earth," the shaking drone said.

"Two days at maximum speed, tops," sneered Vexus.

"And eighty percent of our ships have been destroyed," gulped the drone.

"The shipyards can replace them in a couple of months," snorted the queen.

"Oh, and … uh … we've re-established our link to the ClusterNet," the drone whimpered.

Vexus' mood brightened. "Splendid! Ah, those miserable teenaged brats have no idea of the power they're dealing with." She barked out new orders to her crew of drones. "Prepare for galaxy-wide transmission! I must make sure my robot children truly _understand_ what they actually saw." Vexus enjoyed a laugh at her private joke; _the truth is whatever I say it is_. "I'm sure that Jennifer and her friends think they've achieved some kind of _victory_ here today. Bah! They have achieved _nothing_ …"

Then the shivering drone shielded his dome-head with his arms. "Um … Your Majesty? There's … _already_ a galaxy-wide transmission going out over the ClusterNet."

Vexus arched a puzzled eyebrow, as a large video monitor dropped from the ceiling …

And came to life with the smiling image of Allison, the traitorous LSN droid.

"… so you see, every night when you go into sleep mode, the Cluster Backup System has been re-writing your memories, to make you believe whatever Queen Vexus wants you to believe! So you must never, ever use the backup headsets, ever again. She says that she loves her robot children – but she really thinks of us as nothing more than her personal property! Vexus is nothing but an evil, power-hungry tyrant. But don't take my word for it; let her tell you herself!"

The screen cut to a video of Vexus, yelling at Allison in cyberspace, and snarling like a maniac. "My destiny is to reign over every last robot, and enslave every last meat-creature, in the entire universe! My destiny is to become a _robotic god_! Compared to that, the life of one annoying little robot girl means absolutely nothing. The lives of a _million_ robots mean nothing! If I have to pave the planet Earth with a layer of robot bodies ten feet deep, it means nothing! All that matters is victory! For that is the Cluster's destiny! That is _my_ destiny!"

The queen's jaw dropped open. _That little … that little brat saved a copy of that conversation?_

Vexus sank down into her dented throne and sulked. "This … could be a problem."

* * *

Brad pulled his father's Turbo Wagon into the high school's lot, and found a good parking space. "Oh … hang on a second!" he said. "We might as well do this the right way!"

He hopped out of the car and scurried around to the passenger-side door, pausing to check his reflection in the window. His coppery hair was behaving itself for a change. He didn't have any spinach stuck in his teeth. And there wasn't a single wrinkle to be found on the shiny lapels of his black tuxedo jacket. He'd spent the better part of an hour on his bow tie alone, and his good dress shoes were shining almost as brightly as his killer smile. Brad tugged at his cuffs and adjusted his cummerbund, and had to admit to himself – _the Bradster_ looked darn good in a formal tux. A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. _Well, how big of a surprise is that, really?_

"Allow me to get that for you, mademoiselle?" he chuckled, opening the car door with a melodramatic sweep of his arm.

"You know … you really _are_ a nut," she laughed.

Brad grinned as he gallantly took Jenny's hand, and helped her out of the car. He'd seen her nearly fall apart from depression, and get blasted to within an inch of her life by the Cluster fleet. But now she was a beautiful vision, like a glamorous movie star that had stepped out of an old movie. Her chassis glistened with a dozens layers of sparkling polish and six shades of aquamarine; after all her concern about picking a color, she'd stuck with her original, the one that looked best on her. She wore a full-length gown of white and aqua, made from a special fabric mixed with titanium thread; not only would her metal body not tear the material, but it shimmered with shiny, breathtaking patterns when the light caught it the right way. Her pigtails were reconfigured, allowing her to wear her hair "up" for the evening, which gave her a very sophisticated look. Brad shook his head in amazement; she sure didn't look like the robotic tomboy he'd come to know so well.

"Wow, you clean up real nice," laughed Brad, "my compliments to your mom."

"The dress was a reward for saving the Earth," said Jenny, giving her gown a playful twirl. "Of course, Mom had to go and make it bulletproof and laser resistant. And I think there's some ninja throwing stars stitched into the hemline. But it still looks really nice!"

"Nice doesn't begin to describe it," he smiled, looking her over from head to toe. "You're going to be the most beautiful girl at the Prom. There's just one thing missing." Brad reached into his pocket and pulled out the metallic headband, and set it on top of Jenny's head like a crown.

"Thanks," she giggled, as a flash of aqua blue came across her cheeks. Then her face dropped, with a hint of sadness in her eyes. "Actually … there's still a few things missing."

It was horrible to see her upset on a night like tonight. But he shared her pain and concerns, too. Brad took her metallic hands in his, and gave them a warm, reassuring squeeze. "They're okay, Jen," he said, lifting her face to meet his eternally optimistic smile. "They just … have to be. They're okay. And you know they'd want you to be here."

He offered his arm, and she gently slid her hand through his elbow with a renewed smile, and they made their way towards the festively decorated gymnasium. A huge banner had been spread over the main doors, which read "Welcome to the Tremorton High School Junior Prom – Magic Under the Stars!" The parking lot was filled with sparkling cars and stretch limos, and hundreds of teenagers dressed in dapper tuxedos and dazzling gowns, anxiously looking forward to the night of their lives. Heads turned and couples waved as Jenny and Brad walked by, and there were gasps of surprise at Jenny's stunning transformation. She waved back, giggling as she acknowledged the compliments of her classmates. "I almost can't believe this is really happening," she blushed.

"Yeah, after getting our butts fried by an Omni-droid, and being slaves on Cluster Prime, and then getting attacked by a giant alien fleet … it almost _does_ seem kind of weird," added Brad – then he arched an eyebrow, as if he was wondering whether or not to ask her something. Finally, he did. "_Does_ it seem weird to you, Jenny?"

She paused for a moment in front of the gym doors; she knew what Brad was _really_ asking her. So many times they'd walked through these doors, laughing and joking as pals, or buddies. But now they were here at the Prom together, with her in a head-turning formal dress, and Brad looking _very_ handsome in his tuxedo. As happy as she was to be here with him tonight, part of her couldn't help but wonder if he felt a bit awkward. "You know, really weird thing is, that it doesn't _feel weird_ to me at all. Maybe it should, but … it's just that I just feel so comfortable around you, Brad."

"_Comfortable?_ Yeah, that's what every guy wants to hear," he said, rolling his eyes sarcastically.

"Stop it!" she giggled, poking him in the ribs. "What I mean is … we're best friends … and you always treat me like a _true_ friend, Brad. No matter what the other kids say, no matter what the rest of the world says … I always know that you're going to be there for me. I have to put up with so much junk in my life … I … I don't tell you enough how great it is to have a true friend like you."

Brad just smiled warmly at her, as she shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye. "And because I'm here with you tonight, instead of some _stupid_ jock, I know I'm going to have fun, and I'm going to enjoy myself. And I won't worry that my date thinks I'm just a lumbering metal freak. Tonight, I … I almost feel like I'm a real, human girl."

And Brad knew how much _that_ meant to her. He took her by the hands, and gave them a gentle squeeze. "Jen … this school is filled with 'real' girls, who are about as human as a kitchen toaster. They don't care about anyone or anything but themselves, and the most important thing they do with their lives is shop for lipstick. And you're not like that at all. It doesn't matter whether you've covered in skin or steel. You're more real than any of them."

A raging blush flowed across her cheeks, and she held onto Brad's arm a bit more tightly. Happy flashes of electric impulses danced through her microchips, and she could feel her turbopumps pounding madly within her chest. She smiled into his dark eyes, lowered her cheek onto his shoulder …

When a distraught young geek in a powder-blue tuxedo suddenly materialized in front of them.

"H-h-hi there, Jenny, Brad," he whimpered, with a heartbroken, nasally moan. "Gee, don't you two look … _sob_ … lovely together?"

Jenny and Brad exchanged a pair of raised eyebrows, and had to shake their heads at poor Sheldon. As annoying as he could be, Jenny knew that he still harbored romantic feelings for her. And tonight the poor boy was a pathetic mix of fashion nightmare and lip-quivering grief. His wide lapels and ruffled shirt looked like something his great-grandfather might have worn to his prom; and he'd probably used more oil in his thick black hair than she had in her own oil pan. But even though she was a bit upset that her little moment with Brad had been shattered, she couldn't help but feel sorry for him. And besides, she had hoped to bump into him at _some_ point tonight, because there was something she wanted to do for him. Brad fought back a chuckle, and nodded his head as if to say _go ahead_.

"Aww, Sheldon, that's such a sweet thing to say," she smiled. "I haven't seen you around school for the past few days. Where were you?"

Sheldon tugged nervously at his shirt collar, and broke out in a sweat. "Um … last few days? I was, uh … out of town. Visiting my sick aunt. No, visiting _two_ sick aunts …"

"_Because_, there's something I wanted to ask you," she said, trying to calm him down. She tapped the steel-and-aqua headband on her forehead. "Sheldon … _you_ made this for me, didn't you?"

A crooked smile broke out on his pimply face. "Well, yeah … it was nothing, really …"

Then she stepped closer, and rested her smooth, polished hands against his shivering shoulders. "Sheldon, this is the best present that anyone's ever given me, _ever_. I'm so lucky to have a friend like you. I don't know how I could ever thank you … so I hope _this_ will do."

And she flung her robotic arms around the gangly teenager, wrapping him up in an intimate embrace. Sheldon's eyes nearly launched out of their sockets, and his face blushed fire-engine red from the neck up. Incomprehensible murmurs of shock and joy squeaked from his mouth, and his body went as rigid as a granite statue. And just when it seemed like the very doors of nirvana had opened upon Sheldon, and things couldn't possibly get any better … Jenny gently pressed her divine metallic lips against his trembling mouth, with a quick kiss. Fireworks filled the sky, grand orchestras struck up a romantic waltz, and little cupids flew in circles above his head …

Then his eyes rolled back, and he fainted dead away into Jenny's arms, grinning from ear to ear.

Jenny tried to prop Sheldon up with one hand, while Brad looped an arm around his back to keep him from collapsing to the sidewalk. "Geez, Jenny," he laughed, "I think you _killed_ him. I guess your lips are even more dangerous than your lasers."

She gave Brad a dirty look, and deployed a fan from her wrist to revive Sheldon …

"We-ell, isn't this a sweet little scene," cooed a snobbish, accented voice. "See, Jenny? You were so _very_ concerned about finding a prom date, and now look at you … one _loser_ on each arm!"

"All the dorks grouped together in one convenient package for the whole evenin'! _Ha!_ Oh, dat's hot!"

Jenny flinched at the sound of those voices, and scowled back at the last two people in the world that she wanted to see right now. The Krust cousins had arrived in show-stopping fashion, poking their heads through the moon roof of a fifty-foot pearl-white, gold-trimmed limousine, like a pair of parade queens. The ostentatious limo drew a crowd of gawking students; lavishing Brit and Tiff with the attention that they craved so much, and of course, so richly deserved. Brit smirked at Jenny with her superior little smile, and snapped her fingers for her chauffeur to spring into action.

The driver opened the limo's door like a royal porter, and out stepped the Krusts, dressed in the most sensational, over-the-top prom gowns ever seen by modern man. Everyone _oohed_ and aahed in unison at the flowing silk and bold styling of the Jean-Phillipe originals. Brit looked positively sensational in a champagne-colored gown with matching cocktail gloves, and her hair piled up in elaborate curls that must have taken a day to style. True to her edgy nature, Tiff's gown had a modern design, with a shorter skirt, matching corset and knee-high boots. And just in case their supreme dominance over the social scene had not yet been made clear, out of the limousine came the school's most desirable hunks, Don Prima and Justin Spitzer. The tuxedo-clad studs looped their arms around the Krusts' waists, and casually picked at flecks of lint on their jackets.

"Careful Don, don't wrinkle the dress," said Brit, brushing his hand away. Then she turned her attention back to Jenny, and propped her gloved hands against her slim hips. "Oh, Jenny, your little outfit is simply adorable! I would never have thought you could make a prom gown out of aluminum foil."

"It figures," sneered Tiff, "at my house, we always wrap up _leftovers_ in aluminum foil. So, did your mommy make it for you? Or did you get it fitted down at the auto shop?" The social divas burst into cruel laughter, as they looked down their noses at the robot girl.

Jenny handed Sheldon over to Brad, and stomped up to the Krusts with fire boiling in her cheeks. "Come on, can't you two give it a rest for one night? Everyone just wants to have fun!"

"Oh, I _am_ having fun, I can assure you," huffed Brit, as she flashed a perfect smile to a group of spellbound admirers. Then her eyes narrowed into a pair of dangerous slits. "Here's a little free advice, you tin-plated pretender. The rest of the school might be all _ga-ga_ over the great XJ-9 since you saved the planet, but to us, you'll always be a pathetic little freak that ought to be sent to the junkyard. The Prom is the high point of the social calendar, and tonight belongs to _us_."

"So jes' step off, and stay out of our way, fool," said Tiff, with an attitude-filled snap of her fingers. "Man, at least we only gots to put up with _one_ of you annoying robo-dweebs tonight."

Bolts of electricity crackled in Jenny's eyes like a storm at sea.

It was all she could do to keep herself from punching Tiff in the mouth. "You little _witch_! How could you _say_ something like that …"

"Yes, yes, boo hoo, we're such _terrible_ people," laughed Brit, mocking Jenny's anger. "At least _Android_ and his little friend had the good sense to stay on that _horrid_ robot planet, with their _own kind_. If we're lucky, maybe you'll wise up and go join your slimy little friend someday."

A cool breeze blew at the aqua folds of Jenny's gown, and her shoulders sunk with a stab of sadness. The Krusts were just being their usual, snooty selves; that wasn't what really bothered her right now. In their own tasteless way, they had brought up the subject of her missing friends, and reminded her that she was the lone robot in school once again. Nobody on Earth had heard a peep from Cluster Prime since the invasion had been stopped; nobody knew for sure if Drew and Allison were free, or captured, or even if they were still _alive_. And she never got a chance to thank them for everything they did. She never got a chance to say goodbye to them. She didn't _want_ to say goodbye to them. Brad rested a comforting hand on her shoulder as she tilted her head skyward, and looked at the twinkling of ten thousand distant stars. "I wonder what they're doing right now," she said sadly.

"Probably changing each other's oil filters," chortled Tiff, as she pushed down the folds of her dress. The evening breeze was starting to kick up a bit. "Whoa! Getting a little nippy out here, Cuz. Maybe we should make our grand entrance?"

"_Capital_ idea, cousin," smiled Brit, as she held out her hand for Don to tend to. "Well, it's been absolutely lovely chatting with you again, Jenny, but we have a pair of spotlights waiting for us inside. So if you'll excuse us, we'll be on our …"

The blast of wind came out of nowhere.

It whipped up loose pieces of scrap and litter into roiling clouds of dust. Girls shrieked with surprise and braced against their dates, as their dresses flapped like signal flags in a gale. The Krusts screeched like alley cats, and made a futile attempt to shield their elaborate hairdos. Brad gave Jenny a confused look – _what the heck's going on?_ She grit her teeth and huffed to herself – _aw, c'mon, not tonight, can't a girl catch a break?_ Jenny deployed a Doppler radar dish from her head, and made a quick scan. Strangely, the wind seemed to be coming from … _directly overhead._

Then there was a hint of creaking metal. From the direction of Brit and Tiff's limousine.

And to the shock of the crowd, the limo's hood … _caved in_ on itself.

With a wailing metallic _shriek_, the entire front end of the limo was mashed as flat as a pancake. Its tires buckled, its windshield shattered, and its engine block ground into the pavement with a sickening crunch. Its hoses burst and its radiator snapped; and in its final death throes, it coughed up a filthy shower of motor oil and anti-freeze. With lightning-fast reflexes, Jenny deployed a parasol from her wrist to protect Brad and herself from the messy splatter. But the Krusts and their dates never had a chance. Brit and Tiff wailed in agony, as thick globs of motor oil and radiator fluid rained down upon their designer gowns. Jenny deployed a pair of crowd-control barriers to herd the kids away from the mashed limousine; she didn't have a clue as to what was going on. Nobody did.

The air above the limo shimmered with waves of distortion, like ripples on the surface of a pond. The ripples spread out into a very large shape, over fifty feet long … tracing the outline of some kind of vehicle, with stubby wings, and barbed fins … that was shaped like a giant _insect_.

Then with a deep, electric hum, the ghostly outline filled in with shades of black and yellow, revealing itself to be … a Cluster Stealth Wasp! It had touched down with its cloaking device on, and its front landing strut rested squarely in the middle of the limousine's flattened hood.

The students stared with wide-eyed awe, as the bulbous canopy of the alien ship cracked open with a hiss of pressurized air, and slowly tilted upwards … and a smile started to spread across Jenny's face …

As a nervous, silver-green android waved to her, and shouted out from the cockpit. "Uh … sorry about that! It's only the second time I've ever landed this thing!"

"_Drew!_" she shouted, in an outburst of happiness and relief. "I can't believe it! Of all the crazy, stupid stunts you've pulled …" Jenny and Brad bolted out of the astonished crowd, laughing with disbelief at the ridiculous sight of growling, hissing alien spaceship parked in front of a high school gym. They rushed to the side of the Stealth Wasp as their wayward friend unbuckled his harness; Jenny wasn't sure if she wanted to hug the guy, or pound him into a thin paste. Drew flowed himself out of the cockpit and down to the pavement in one fluid motion, then broke into a huge smile at the sight of his friends, and laughed along at the fantastic absurdity of their reunion. The three of them crushed each other in a monster hug, and they laughed and laughed for the better part of a minute, simply amazed that they were actually seeing each other again, and overjoyed that everyone was alive and healthy.

Then Jenny pulled back, and walloped him in the shoulder with a blow that would have broken his arm if he'd been human. "You lousy jerk! I was _so worried_ about you! What was the big idea staying behind on Cluster Prime like that …"

Drew held up his hands defensively. "Hey, hey, I didn't _plan_ it like that! But when Ally wouldn't leave, there was no way I was gonna take off without her …"

"Omigosh!" she shouted, "_Allison!_ What happened to Allison? Is she okay?"

"Why don't you ask her yourself," he smiled, nodding towards the Wasp's cockpit.

Jenny looked up … and let out a giddy, high-pitched shriek of joy.

"So I hear there's some kind of strange human dance ritual tonight," shouted Allison, waving excitedly from the back seat. Drew stretched his arms up to grab her by the waist, and gently lowered her down. It might have been the lighting, but Allison's paint color looked … _different_ somehow. The instant her toes touched the pavement, she and Jenny flung their arms around each other and squealed excitedly, in the way that only teenage girls can. Another round of happy greetings began, and it took another minute for things to cool down enough for a conversation to resume.

"I don't believe this," Jenny gushed, wiping tears from her cheeks. "I was so worried about you guys! What happened after we beat Vexus? When the Silver Shell came back by himself, I was afraid you'd get captured all over again …"

"It turns out to be _very handy_ to know a shape shifter," giggled Allison, as she flashed a smile at Drew. "A new batch of drones showed up just after the Shell left – but Drew morphed himself into one of those giant Cluster warriors, and 'placed me under arrest'. It was tricky, but we managed to sneak out of the queen's palace. It helped that all the drones were behaving … _strangely_."

"The Cluster was seriously screwed up, and Vexus was missing, and Ally realized that she had a golden opportunity to do something major," explained Drew. "She broadcast a video across the whole Cluster, and spilled the beans about the mind control, and the human slaves, and what Vexus is _really_ like. Things are … a little _nutty_ in Cluster-land right now."

"_Wow,_" gasped Jenny, clasping her hands to her mouth. "Is the Cluster actually … breaking apart?"

Allison shook her head, and her voice took on a more sober tone. "That's a little too much to expect from just one video. An empire doesn't fall overnight. Vexus is alive, and she's flying back to Cluster Prime with what's left of her fleet. She still has control over almost all of the Cluster." Then a proud smile formed on Allison's face. "But not _total_ control. Robots are asking questions. They're starting to wonder about Vexus. They're starting to think for themselves."

"That's more dangerous to a tyrant than any battle robot could be," smiled Jenny. "That's awesome!"

"It could be the dawn of a new Cluster," Allison smiled back, nodding in agreement.

"So, what's the deal with this thing?" asked Brad, as he patted the side of the Stealth Wasp, the way a guy might admire a new truck. "Are you guys coming back to Earth for good?"

Drew and Allison exchanged a look, and he heaved his shoulders with a heavy sigh. It was obvious that Brad had touched on the big question. "After the video broadcast, Ally and I finally had a chance to have a long talk, without anyone shooting at us for a change." Drew sighed again, and slid his silvery hand into Allison's, and gave it a squeeze. "And as much as I wish we could stay together … Ally has to stay on Cluster Prime. She's too important; she's the only other robot in the universe that can't be assimilated. She wants to help bring freedom to her home world, by starting a Cluster underground movement."

"And Drew had to come back here – to _his_ home world," continued Allison, with a twinge of sadness in her voice. "I couldn't expect him to leave his family, any more than I would leave mine."

"At least not yet. I haven't even graduated from high school," he added. Then he brightened the somber mood with a smile. "Of course, five thousand light-years doesn't seem _nearly_ as far away as it did two weeks ago."

And with a mischievous smile of her own, Allison swung open a panel on her chest – and pulled out a portable Cluster wormhole generator. "A little something we picked up from a helpful warrior drone," she laughed.

"A teleporter gizmo! _Cooool!_" grinned Brad, ogling the exotic piece of alien technology. "Wait a minute, if you guys got your own teleporter … why'd you bother flying back here in this spaceship?"

Drew gulped nervously, and absent-mindedly rubbed the back of his head. "Oh, uh … see, I was kinda hoping that if I brought back the Stealth Wasp I stole, then, uh … maybe the general wouldn't throw me in jail for the rest of my life. You think maybe, you could talk to him for me, Jenny? Huh?"

She folded her arms and tapped her chin, as if in deep thought. "Well, you _did_ help defeat Vexus and save the world, so I should be able to … get you off with twenty years or so." She enjoyed the ever-so-brief flash of terror on his face. "Psych," she added, with a wicked laugh.

"I'm only staying for a day or two," sighed Allison. "I wanted to observe this amazing planet of humans that you guys told me about. It'll help to destroy another of Vexus' lies, and show that human slavery is wrong. And I want to finally spend some time with you, Jenny – I don't know the first thing about being a leader, and Drew told me you were a pretty good teacher." A twinkle of happiness flashed between the girls' eyes, and then Allison looped her hand around Drew's arm. "Oh, and besides … I couldn't let Drew go back without a prom date," she giggled impishly. "He's come to my rescue a couple of times. It's only fair for me to return the favor."

"So that explains the makeover," said Brad, as a low whistle passed through his lips. Now that Allison was standing under the streetlights, Brad and Jenny realized that there was _indeed_ something unusual about her paint job. It seemed to be _moving_. She'd repainted her chassis in a mix of deep purples and midnight blues, with hints of swirling nebulas and galaxies flowing across her skin. The coating of paint was made with advanced technology that made it behave like a video screen. Stars and galaxies actually _drifted_ across Allison's body, giving her an almost mesmerizing effect. At least, that was the effect that she had on Drew.

"Oh, right, I almost forgot," said Drew, snapping his fingers. He took half a step back, concentrated for a moment … and a wave of distortion washed across his nanobot body. Plain old silver and green wasn't going to cut it for tonight. He repainted his body in rich, deep black, with thin green pinstripes running along his chest and sides. The overall look came close to approximating the formal appearance of a high-tech prom tuxedo. "So, what do you think?"

"Hmmm," smiled Ally, tracing a finger along one of the pinstripes. Then she flashed a sly grin to Jenny. "He's just _loaded_ with handy little features, isn't he?"

With a green blush and a laugh, the four friends walked towards the gym, paying no mind to the awestruck stares of the student body – or the evil stares of the oil-soaked Krust cousins. Brad stepped over a happily babbling Sheldon, and opened the doors to escort Jenny inside. Drew and Allison followed suit, arm in arm, recalling their romantic first dance back at Festival Square. It was the perfect ending to the most amazing ten days of their young lives. The pain and hardships they had collectively endured would form a bond of friendship that they would forever share.

The lights were already low in the gym, and a mirrored ball filled the room with a dazzling array of twinkling lights. With perfect timing, a soft, slow ballad started to waft from the speakers. Brad slid his hand around Jenny's waist, and Allison slid her arms around Drew's neck. There would be plenty of time to talk about battles tomorrow. Tonight, all they would remember was magic under the stars.

* * *

THE END

* * *


End file.
